Good news for United as Lucas agent denies PSG deal

The agent of Manchester United target Lucas Moura has denied the player is on the verge of joining French side Paris Saint-Germain.

The 19-year-old Sao Paulo midfielder was the subject of a rejected bid of 38million euro (£30million) from United last month and Sir Alex Ferguson missed United’s friendly match at Norwegian side Valerenga on Sunday as rumours heightened of a fresh bid for Lucas. However, there have been reports of a 40million euro bid from PSG although Lucas’s agent Wagner Ribeiro denied a deal was close.

“Initially, they said that Lucas was close to Manchester United, now they say PSG?” Ribeiro said yesterday. “Everyone tries to get make the story look like a puzzle. The truth is that there is nothing certain.”

However, the French club’s sporting director Leonardo admitted yesterday that “We are talking to the future,” when asked about Lucas.

Ribeiro has been in the UK along with the teenager’s family to watch the youngster take part in the Olympic football tournament with Brazil. However, French newspaper Le Parisien reports that Ribeiro and the family were at PSG’s friendly match with Barcelona on Saturday night at the Parc des Princes in Paris. If true it could be significant as the PSG game kicked off just minutes after Brazil’s quarter-final victory over Honduras ended at St James’s Park in Newcastle. Lucas was a substitute – and an unused substitute at that – in the Brazil game but it raises the intriguing scenario that the player’s family and his agent missed his potential appearance in the quarter-final of a major tournament in order to travel to Paris in order to talk to another club. It could also explain Sir Alex’s absence for the Valerenga game as he saw his quarry become the target of a club with pockets as deep as United’s.

Sources in Sao Paulo are also denying that a deal is being done either with United or with PSG but Globoesporte in Brazil claims that Lucas has weighed up the various merits of Manchester and Paris and has decided that Manchester is ‘boring’ in comparison with the French capital.