Jorge Mendes Negotiates Potential Alejandro Balde Move to Manchester United

Mendes in the middle: how one agent now holds United's deadline-week cards

Jorge Mendes was in Barcelona on Thursday talking to multiple clubs at once, as SPORTbible first reported — including exploratory conversations with Manchester United over left-back Alejandro Balde, while United sporting director Jason Wilcox works the phones on three parallel tracks ahead of Tuesday's transfer deadline.

The Balde file: why the €1bn clause is theatre

Barcelona's release clause on Balde sits at €1 billion — a number designed never to be triggered. The real negotiation, if one develops, will run through Mendes and through what Barcelona need to balance their own books. TEAMtalk reports the Catalan club are tracking RB Leipzig's Castello Lukeba as a potential successor, but would require player exits to fund that move. Balde is one of the names they could move on. He is also due to hold talks with head coach Hansi Flick after being left out of the weekend fixture against Elche, with Flick understood not to have felt the defender was in the right frame of mind.

United's interest is genuine but hedged. Balde is 22, a La Masia graduate, and brings Champions League experience for a side returning to the competition this season. The medical file, however, is the dossier Wilcox's staff will be scrutinising — three separate hamstring injuries since April 2025, and a World Cup squad omission, tell their own story about availability. On his YouTube channel, Fabrizio Romano characterised the situation by saying Balde "in principle, doesn't want to leave Barcelona" but would accept a departure if Barca themselves open the door. That is standard agent-shorthand for: the price is what matters, not the sentiment. A 2022 Mundo Deportivo interview in which Balde named United as his favourite non-Barcelona club is exactly the sort of detail Mendes' camp will have made sure every interested party has seen.

The cheaper alternative and the deadline math

The more probable move, on the financial logic United have shown this window, is Racing Santander's Jorge Salinas — also a Mendes client and available for a €16 million release clause. TEAMtalk understands that Atletico Madrid are in active discussions with the player's representatives, and that a move within Spain currently appears the player's preference, a familiar pattern when wages, lifestyle and language pull against a Premier League switch.

United have already committed roughly £130 million to Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans this summer and have since finalised a deal for Brighton's Carlos Baleba. Wilcox's preferred target remains Newcastle's Lewis Hall, but the asking price — described as a world-record fee for a left-back — has forced the club to broaden the search. With Tuesday looming, Mendes is now sitting on the only realistic pair of paths to a left-back signing that fits both the wage structure and the amortisation math. That is leverage, and everyone in the room knows it.