Man Utd tried to lure Jurgen Klopp with strange 'Disneyland' pitch

Who will be the next Manchester United manager?

That question was asked louder than ever after United crashed out of the Champions League on Tuesday night.

A 1-0 defeat at home to Atletico Madrid saw them lose 2-1 on aggregate and confirm they will go their fifth consecutive season without a trophy.

It’s been a terrible few years for the Red Devils.

They just haven’t got things right on or off the pitch since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013.

But, in 2014, they were one good sales pitch away from luring Jurgen Klopp away from Borussia Dortmund.

In Raphael Honigstein’s biography on Jurgen Klopp called ‘Bring the Noise’, he explains how former executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward flew out to meet the German manager just weeks before David Moyes was sacked.

However, a bizarre pitch left Klopp unconvinced at the project.

“Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward had flown out to see Klopp in Germany,” Honigstein wrote.

“David Moyes’s short tenure at Old Trafford was coming to an end, and Klopp was United’s favourite to replace him, to bring back a sense of adventure to the Red Devils’ game. 

Woodward told Klopp that the Theatre of Dreams was ‘like an adult version of Disneyland’, a mythical place where, as the nickname suggested, the entertainment was world class and dreams came true.

“Klopp wasn’t entirely convinced by that sales pitch — he found it a bit ‘unsexy’, he told a friend — but he didn’t dismiss the proposition out of hand either.”

Klopp soon decided the United job wasn’t for him.

It would be a year later that Klopp arrived in England but with United’s rivals, Liverpool.

Since then, Liverpool have been transformed into one of the greatest sides the Premier League has ever seen, winning the title