He may be a Manchester City mainstay after his reinvention as a goalscoring midfielder, but Ilkay Gundogan has revealed that Manchester United held talks with Borussia Dortmund a few years before he joined the blue side of the city.
The German joined Dortmund in 2011 from Nurnberg and won the Bundesliga in his first season under Jurgen Klopp, before again playing a key role as they made it all the way to the 2013 Champions League final before being defeated by Bayern Munich.
United's scouts had been frequent visitors to the Westfalenstadion to watch Gundogan's team-mate Shinji Kagawa, eventually snapping up the Japanese in the summer of 2012 for an initial £12million fee.