Former Manchester United coach Benni McCarthy has revealed the club blocked Erik ten Hag from signing Randal Kolo Muani before spending £72m on Rasmus Hojlund.
Ten Hag was keen to bolster his attacking options in the summer of 2023 and eventually welcomed Hojlund to Old Trafford from Serie A side Atalanta.
But McCarthy says PSG forward Kolo Muani, currently on loan at Tottenham, was Ten Hag’s first-choice target that summer.
Ten Hag and his coaches ‘really liked’ Kolo Muani, according to McCarthy, but were ‘overpowered’ by the club who prioritised a deal for Hojlund.
‘We wanted to sign Randal Kolo Muani, he was a player that we really liked,’ McCarthy told Best Betting Sites.
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‘We looked at his profile, and just before we started looking at him, he’d had a huge impact with France at the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
‘He was quick, strong, he was a goal threat. I think that was the kind of player that we kind of looked at and thought that profile really would suit the young team that we had.
‘So obviously Erik asked me just to really just focus on getting the right players. So it was Randal Kolo Muani – he was probably top of the list of strikers which I thought would come in with his experience, and what he’d done at Frankfurt at the time.
‘l thought he was probably best suited to play alongside the likes of Rashford, Bruno and Garnacho at that time.
‘Then obviously Rasmus Hojlund was also in the frame. I think the club, the scouting department, decided otherwise and wanted Hojlund.
‘They felt that Rasmus Hojlund was the better profile, younger as well, with longevity. It could give the club more value going forward.
‘Because of those reasons, the scouting department overpowered basically what the manager wanted. The club obviously went according to the scouting reports and we missed out on Kolo Muani.’
Kolo Muani was in the Bundesliga with Eintracht Frankfurt when Erik ten Hag tried to bring him to Manchester United.
The World Cup finalist completed a £76m move to PSG later that summer but struggled at the French giants.
Tottenham signed Kolo Muani on a season-long loan deal in September but the 26-year-old is yet to make a significant impact for Spurs, making just two Premier League appearances.
Hojlund, meanwhile, scored 16 goals during his first season at Old Trafford before enduring a miserable 2024-25 campaign.
The Denmark international was offloaded to Napoli last summer after Manchester United brought in Benjamin Sesko from RB Leipzig.
McCarthy was disappointed to see Hojlund depart and says he and Sesko could have made a ‘good striker pairing’.
‘I think Sesko and Rasmus Hojlund would have been a good pair, to have two top strikers at the club,’ he said. ‘Both young, of course, both foreign, both from outside England.
‘They have to adapt. They need to adapt to their new environment. But I think once they both get going, it could have been a really good pair for United like they had back in the day.
‘They had Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Teddy Sheringham. They had four really top-class strikers and you just have to try and make it work.
‘And I think United would have had a similar situation if they had kept Rasmus Hojlund. But I understand, players want to play.
‘When you make that bold move to come to United, you don’t want to be sharing the load with somebody else or sitting on the bench while the other one plays and vice versa.
‘So, yeah, tough decisions, but the club ended up offloading Rasmus Hojlund, and he seems to be very happy where he is, and he’s playing and he’s gaining valuable experience and he’s scoring goals.
‘It’s good for his confidence and he’s still a United player. At the end of the day maybe he’ll come back from this loan and then hopefully he’ll be ready then to kick on for United.
‘Then he and Benjamin Sesko can work together. For Sesko, he’ll have to adapt to the way of playing, and he’s already scored two goals now in the last three games.
‘So once he can hit the ground running, United will have really good pedigree up front and they are relatively young footballers.’
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