Former Liverpool favourite Daniel Agger claims he emphatically snubbed a move to Manchester City shortly before he departed Anfield.
The Danish defender, 39, became a cult hero during his eight-year stay on Merseyside and was part of the team which came agonisingly close to winning the Premier League title during the 2013/14 campaign under Brendan Rodgers.
Agger would move back to his former club, Brondby, shortly after the disappointment of missing out on the title. But he came close to leaving Liverpool in 2012 – and it was one of the Reds’ biggest rivals who made a play to prise the centre-back away.
With Agger’s contract expiring, both Manchester City and Barcelona chased his signature. But he’s since revealed that he never had any intention of joining Liverpool’s domestic rivals.
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Speaking on the Aldo Meets Podcast, Agger said: “It was a strange one. I remember I got presented for all these things and the club asked me what I was going to do and I said, ‘If you want me here, I will stay’.
“But I said, ‘If you don’t want me, if you don’t see me as part of your future I think it’s time that I go because I want to play football. I prefer to do it here but if you don’t think I’m good enough then I would like to go because these offers are on the table and I don’t know if I will have them next year’.
“I don’t know the story from their side, I think they agreed a price (with Barcelona) and they accepted it and came to me and said, ‘This is it’. I said, ‘Okay, fair enough’. But then from the side, another offer came in which was a lot higher, which they accepted and I didn’t want to go to that club.”
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Agger, who went on to confirm the club in question was Manchester City later in the podcast, then revealed he told Liverpool that he would only join Barcelona.
He continued: “I said, ‘If you want to sell me I go down there (to Barcelona) otherwise I don’t go’. And another offer came in from the same club (Man City), higher, and my feeling was that the club wanted me to go because it was a lot of money back then. I said, ‘There’s no chance I’m going to that club, so better just stop now’.”
After falling out of favour under Brendan Rodgers, Agger returned to his native Denmark in the summer of 2014. He made 232 appearances in total for Liverpool.
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