Garry Cook’s view of the events

As the deal to bring Kaká from AC Milan to Manchester City came apart in the oddest of circumstances, a number of cold hard facts were left off the plate. While they will be speculated for quite some time, £100m plus deal do not evaporate without reason.

Man City executive chairman Garry Cook said via the club web-site:

“I think the intention from AC Milan was clearly to sell their player and Manchester City’s intention was clearly to bring him to the football club.

“I think there was some political pressure and definitely media space that they engaged in. To be honest, I think they bottled it, simple as that.”

“They live in a different space than we do as a football club and it’s been interesting to watch their behaviour.

“We never met the player, we only met the representatives, we never actually made him an offer on personal terms.

“So it’s very difficult to turn down something that you’ve not been offered.

“We’ve heard everything and there’s been a bit of mudslinging, but we’re going to choose not to get into that, our objective is that we’re building a football club for the long term.

“It would have been great to have had Kaka at this football club, the Premier League would have benefitted, football would have benefitted and we were willing to make that investment on rational terms. Unfortunately, the behaviour that they showed was not what we had expected nor had we anticipated.

“We’ve been to Milan four times and the delegation yesterday involved three lawyers that represent the legal counsel for Manchester City football club.

“It also involved a board member who had flown half way around the world from Abu Dhabi, myself and one other senior executive.

“We were confined to a room, with no food or drink, and we asked some questions of the football club and more importantly we asked some questions of the representatives of the player and they simple could not answer the questions.

“What they wanted to talk about was; ‘how much are you going to pay him?’We chose not to get into that and we didn’t make an offer to the player.

“Is he a great footballer? Yes. Does he represent all the values you would want to have as an ambassador of the sport global and were we looking for the opportunity to joint venture in areas that would take this club on to a different platform? Yes, but unfortunately the landscape changed and his representatives wanted to talk about how much we were going to pay him.

“Money was certainly the motive yesterday.”