How a Man Utd deadline day deal was done with 11 minutes to go | OneFootball

The breathless drama of transfer deadline day is one of the biggest events in the football calendar.

Clubs scramble to get deals done; players board planes and jet off for medicals; the live-ticker sets pulses racing; and at the end of the day, the window slams shut.

It’s difficult not to get swept up in the theatre of it all.

This year, one of the most eye-catching transfers involving two of the biggest clubs in European women’s football went through just minutes before the deadline.

This is the story of that transfer, told by the people who made it happen.

Signe Bruun is a 23-year-old striker who was recently named Danish Women’s Player of the Year, ending Chelsea forward Pernille Harder’s six-year run of winning the award.

Last summer Bruun moved from Paris Saint-Germain to Olympique Lyon, where she went on to score six goals in 11 appearances for the Division 1 Féminine leaders.

Shortly after her move to Lyon, she signed with A&V Sports, a world renowned management agency whose clients include Ada Hegerberg, Sam Kerr and Kadeisha Buchanan.

She may have only recently joined one of the top clubs in women’s football but Bruun was already thinking about the next big step in her career, and she dreamed of one day playing in England.

On the evening of Tuesday 25 January, approximately 40 hours before the women’s transfer deadline, Bruun was at a basketball game with her Lyon team-mates when she received several calls from Alan Naigeon – her agent and one of the managing partners at A&V.

Naigeon had been contacted that evening by Manchester United, who were originally interested in signing another one of his clients.

Unfortunately for United, the player they were enquiring about wasn’t available. Instead, Naigeon casually mentioned that Bruun might be interested in joining them, but not until the summer.

United couldn’t wait that long, however, and they asked if there was any possibility of signing her on loan before the January deadline.

That’s why Naigeon was calling Bruun, and sensing something was happening, she excused herself from the basketball game to call him back.

“We’d received a lot of loan proposals this winter but we turned them all down,” Naigeon tells OneFootball.

“We thought staying at Lyon could have been amazing with the possibility of winning the treble and the Champions League.

“But suddenly I was in a position where I had to call her to discuss United’s offer, like we always do because we never want to dismiss an opportunity.”

It was a very tempting offer. Bruun was in no hurry to leave Lyon but the chance to move to England was too appealing to immediately dismiss, and she raced home from the basketball for an impromptu 11pm Zoom call with United head coach Marc Skinner and his assistant Martin Ho, where the club’s plans for her were laid out.

“She didn’t want to feel like she was option B, C or D for United, because she wants to play and be at the centre of a project,” says Naigeon.

“If she is just going to come off the bench and help the team, she might as well have stayed at Lyon and done that for one of the best teams in the world.

“Marc and Martin were really honest about the fact that if they knew she was on the market, they would have been discussing a transfer a long time ago.

“They made it clear that they were having a call at 11pm because they wanted her to be their no 9, and that was what swung it.”

Bruun wasn’t ready to make a decision just yet though, and she agreed to sleep on it.

In the meantime, A&V began to put the wheels in motion. First they sought permission from Lyon to speak to United and once that was granted, it was time to discuss personal terms.

After almost a full day of intense negotiations, a deal was struck between player and club, and on the Wednesday evening with fewer than 24 hours to go until the deadline, Bruun made up her mind. She would join United on loan for the rest of the season.

What came next was a whirlwind of activity.

Bruun first had to drive to Lyon’s training ground to pick up her belongings and then head back home to start packing her bags. In the meantime, A&V booked her a flight to Manchester for the following morning.

But there was a big problem. United were still trying to formally agree a loan deal with Lyon, but Lyon weren’t responding.

With the men’s transfer deadline also rapidly approaching, the French club were too busy finalising the €42m sale of Bruno Guimarães to Newcastle United and working on signing a replacement, meaning the Bruun deal would have to wait.

Nevertheless, Bruun packed her life into six suitcases and boarded a flight to Manchester early on the morning of Thursday 27 January – transfer deadline day.

Waiting to meet her at Manchester Airport was A&V’s head of sponsorship, Andrew Irving, along with United’s player care officer.

But despite Bruun’s flight landing on time at just before 10:30, she was nowhere to be seen at the arrivals gate.

The minutes ticked by and it soon transpired that she was being held up at customs as the British immigration authorities scrutinised her paperwork.

Time was of the essence with the window closing at 5pm that day, but Bruun ended up being stuck at customs for over two hours before she was finally officially allowed to enter the country, and she was quickly whisked off to United’s training centre to undergo a thorough medical.

Worryingly though, with just hours left in the window, the two clubs still hadn’t come to an agreement.

“The contract was only verbally agreed,” says Naigeon. “There was nothing on paper, nothing was signed.”

While Bruun was undergoing her medical, with limited phone signal making communication with her agent extremely difficult, A&V pushed Lyon to get the deal done and finally things started to move. Contracts were drawn up and Bruun had to stop the medical halfway through to sign the paperwork, otherwise there would have been a danger of missing the deadline.

“I remember thinking the contract would be signed in a big boardroom, everybody would be taking their time, calmly shaking hands,” says Irving, who was with Bruun at the training ground.

“The reality was me and Signe were sat next to each other, huddled over her phone, looking at her contract in the corner next to the fridge.”

A problem with one of the documents threatened to derail the whole deal and the fact United were also signing two other players on deadline day only made things more frantic.

But with just 11 minutes to go before the window closed, Bruun’s last paperwork was submitted, the transfer went through and she was officially unveiled as a United player.

It was now time to celebrate and unwind at the end of a stressful 24 hours.

A combination of excitement, nerves and packing meant Bruun had slept just two hours the night before, and the deal had been on such a knife-edge that Naigeon believes it could have been scuppered entirely had she flown to Manchester via London rather than taking a connecting flight from Brussels.

“It might not have been done if it wasn’t two big clubs,” says Naigeon.

“And that’s why nowadays a lot of big players trust us with these kind of transactions. Even when it’s meant to be impossible with the limitations of the women’s game, we try to find ways and we have enough people to make it happen.

“If we had the money to afford a private jet it would make things even easier!”

Bruun still hasn’t had chance to properly say goodbye to her Lyon team-mates or coach Sonia Bompastor, but on Wednesday evening she made her United debut as a substitute in their FAWSL Cup defeat at Chelsea.

She could join the club permanently in the summer or she could head back to Lyon. If she catches the eye for Denmark at Euro 2022, it’s possible she could even attract the interest of other clubs.

But for now she’s living her dream in England, and it all began at a basketball game in Lyon, with just 40 hours left on the clock.