Casemiro transfer to Man Utd splits opinion
FT Desk
- 23 Aug 2022 05:00 BST
- 3 min read
Manchester United legends Roy Keane and Gary Neville weren't exactly in full agreement when it came to appraising Casemiro's €83 million transfer from Real Madrid on Monday.
Keane and Neville - who won 17 major honours together as Red Devils teammates in the 1990s and early 2000s - were reunited to cover Monday night's clash between Manchester United and Liverpool at Old Trafford.
Casemiro was presented as United's latest summer signing before their 2-1 win, sealed thanks to goals from Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford, while many of the headlines went Cristiano Ronaldo's way, with the Portuguese only featuring for the final four minutes.
Welcome to Old Trafford, Casemiro 👋 pic.twitter.com/dBGZh8Qhdf
— Football Transfers (@Transfersdotcom) August 22, 2022
Casemiro only watched on with the ink barely dry on the bumper contract which will see him earn £18.2m/€21.5m year in Manchester, making him the third-highest paid player at the club behind Ronaldo and David de Gea.
A debut against Southampton next Saturday looms, but Keane and Neville don't share the same excitement.
Keane: 'He's a good signing'
"You can look at the bigger picture and think it’s a lot of money, long contract, bit like [Christian] Eriksen getting a three-year deal, agents out there must be delighted working with Man United," Keane told Sky Sports.
"They're desperate and you've got to pay over the odds, I suppose. [But] he's a good signing, they paid a lot of money for him."
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A defensive midfielder, Casemiro arrives as a five-time Champions League winner with Real Madrid, but Neville suspects he was far from Erik ten Hag's first choice in the position.
"That's why sometimes now I don't get as excited as I do about the signings that come in because I know they're not apart of the strategy at the start of the summer," he opined.
"Every other club is very precise, you don't see them bouncing around like a pinball for one player to another. It's [Frenkie] De Jong, [Adrien] Rabiot then it ends up being Casemiro on a phenomenal contract that's going to cost the club £160m."
