On Thursday, United swooped in and offered a last minute deal to Magalhaes amidst the Arsenal medical.
Arsenal had a medical for the Lille defender after having talks with Magalhaes about coming to Arsenal yesterday for a reported fee of £22.6million. And for a short moment, it did seem like Arsenal had bagged the much-coveted centre back.
But Manchester United came in at the last moment in an attempt to override Arsenal’s offer.
Lille president Gerard Lopez told talkSPORT on Thursday: “I think it’s fair to say that Arsenal are a high interest to him, Napoli is a high interest to him.
“We’ve given him plenty of time to make up his mind. We’ve always said, ‘look if we have an agreement with two clubs or three clubs and the agreements are the same then we are not going to create a bidding competition’.
“It’s always fair. We always say ‘whenever we have the number that we want you are free to choose’.
“And that choice, I don’t think I’m giving up too much if I tell you that that choice is probably today or tomorrow.
“I’m unable to tell you what that choice is. We’ve given him some recommendations but we don’t like to talk about it in public because we don’t want people to feel bad.
“We’ve talked about where he should go but at the end of the day he and his environment make a choice and we support that.”
When asked if Arsenal was his first choice, he said: “I don’t want to say that and I don’t want to speak for the player.”
Now it’s up to Magalhaes to make a choice between Arsenal and Manchester United.
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