Manchester United could have signed James Rodriguez for £5m a few years ago... whoops!

(Apparently he would have turned out much uglier had he ended up in Manchester)

The Guardian

Even so, the player was available for as little as £5m when he was touted to United, a club who employed a permanent scout in South America and had close ties with the region having recruited Uruguay’s Diego Forlán and, albeit via Wigan Athletic, Antonio Valencia of Ecuador.

Sir Alex Ferguson was close to securing Javier Hernández from Guadalajara at the time, but the agents attempting to bring Rodríguez to Europe received no response from United. A few weeks later, United instead spent £7.4m on Bebé – only five weeks after the Portuguese had signed for Vitória Guimarães – to bolster their attack – despite Ferguson later admitting he had never seen the striker play.

Rodríguez moved from Argentina to Portugal when he signed for Porto in 2010 for £4m, with 30% of the player’s economic rights retained by third parties, and was part of André Villas-Boas’s unbeaten team who claimed the domestic double and Europa League that season.

You hear stories about this all the time about possible prior destinations and what could have been for breakout players earlier in their careers, but this is still pretty funny. Not like United really need another number 10 after Rooney, Mata, Kagawa, and Januzaj, but saying it wouldn't be worth it to spend £5m for a player who could do this at 18 is ridiculous.

James Rodriguez has been absolutely world class this World Cup. I don't like to make judgements after only watching scattered Monaco games this past season and 4 games for his national team, but you can't help but think this guy is a potential Ballon d'Or winner one day if he's already playing this well at the international level. He lit Portugal up at Porto and he's well poised to be the main man at a Monaco team that should improve leaps and bounds over the next few years. Oh yeah, and he's getting paid millions of euros with basically no tax because of Monaco's adjusted tax laws. This is the dance of a 22 year old kid absolutely killing it.