How Herrera's Man Utd loyalty kept Dembele at Barca

Stefan Bienkowski

• 1 Feb 2022 11:16 CST
• 7 min read

One of the biggest surprises about the January transfer window was the fact that Barcelona winger Ousmane Dembele didn’t end up leaving the Spanish club.

The French winger was widely considered to be a ready-made transfer on deadline day, with the Catalan side going as far as to say that he would be sold if he didn’t sign an extension to his contract.

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No new deal was penned and reports leading up to deadline day suggested that a move to Paris Saint-Germain was now on the cards. However, that also didn’t happen. And it now seems to have been all Manchester United’s fault.

Why didn’t Dembele sign for PSG?

Although Dembele seemingly agreed personal terms with the French giants and was perfectly happy to make the move, the transfer was ultimately held up because of PSG’s concern of UEFA’s FFP rules.

According to Sky Sports, the Ligue 1 giants couldn’t sign Dembele until another player left the club, for fear of breaking the financial rules.

And while PSG had a number of players to hand that they would have happily moved on, none were willing to leave the club on deadline day. And one in particular opted to stay put because of Man Utd.

Why is it Man Utd’s fault?

One such player was none other than Ander Herrera, who was reportedly the subject of numerous advances by Tottenham Hotspur on deadline day.

However, according to the Express, the central midfielder shot down any opportunity of making the move to London because his loyalty to former club Man Utd meant he would never play for another Premier League side.

To the great frustration of Tottenham and PSG, that meant that Spurs never got their midfield target and their French counterparts were never able to shift a first team player to sign Dembele.