Lucas Paquetá still cannot let go of the Manchester City move that slipped away from him in 2023, and three years on he has made it clear it was City he wanted above anyone else.
The Brazilian midfielder is back home at Flamengo now, after a €42m move from West Ham United in the January transfer window. That switch was very much a chance to put the betting case that hung over his time in England behind him.
But the case cost him more than a few difficult seasons in east London. It also cost him the transfer he had dreamed about, to Manchester City.
How close did Paquetá come to joining Man City?
Very close. Pep Guardiola’s side were advancing on a potential £80m deal for the midfielder in August 2023, and the move was effectively agreed in principle. It was on the verge of completion when the betting allegations surfaced.
City first put the deal on hold, then pulled out of the negotiations altogether. Anyone who followed that week on this site will remember how quickly it went from done deal to definitely off.
Paquetá was accused of deliberately getting himself booked in four specific matches across 2022 and 2023 to manipulate the betting market so that others could profit. The case ran for years, and he was eventually cleared of all the major spot-fixing and betting misconduct charges by an Independent Regulatory Commission. By then, though, the damage had been done, and he left West Ham not long after he was found not guilty.
‘It was City, it was City’
Paquetá was answering questions on TikTok when the subject came up. According to Omatogrossense, he said he did not regret his choices but accepted that the investigation had wrecked his plans.
“I didn’t end up going to City because of the investigation I went through, you see?” he said.
When one person in the conversation brought up Real Madrid and Barcelona and asked whether he had really wanted to play in Manchester, he did not hesitate. “No, it was City, it was City. I’ve always really liked City,” he replied.
He added that the case had dragged on for so long that, by the time he was cleared, a deal was no longer possible. He was at a different stage of his career, and a move to the Etihad simply stopped being part of his plans.
Why the timing mattered so much
That is the cruel part of it. Paquetá was not turned down on footballing grounds. City wanted him and the deal was agreed in principle. What stopped the deal was a process that took years to reach a verdict, and by the time it did, both the player and the club had moved on.
Lucas Paquetá and the Man City move that never was
You can understand why he still feels sore. Being cleared is one thing, but nobody can hand him back the chance to play for Guardiola at the peak of his career. His frustration looks fair to us.
From City’s side, pulling out in 2023 was the sensible call. No club could sign an £80m player with an open betting investigation hanging over him and simply hope for the best. City’s midfield looks very different now, as our Elliot Anderson scouting report shows.
So this one goes down as a genuine what if. Paquetá is home at Flamengo, City have long since gone in other directions, and the only thing left from that August is a player who still says, three years on, that it was City he wanted.
