Real Madrid president Florentino Perez slams Ed Woodward and Man Utd for 'lack of experience.'

Florentino Perez has launched a withering attack on Manchester United and executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, blaming a “lack of experience” for the events which saw David De Gea’s transfer to Real Madrid fall through.

The recriminations following Madrid’s failure to sign the goalkeeper have been prolonged, with the clubs issuing contradictory statements about who was to blame for the collapse of the transfer late on Monday night.

De Gea’s digital paperwork was not filed before the Spanish transfer window closed and Perez, invited to explain the farce, laid the blame squarely at the feet of United and Woodward, who replaced David Gill in 2013.

Woodward was unable to secure a deadline day move for Real Madrid left-back Fabio Coentrao in September 2013 when paperwork was not lodged in time, and suffered embarrassment when a first attempt to sign Ander Herrera collapsed at the same time.

“I think what they lack is experience,” Perez told Cadena SER. “It happened before with Coentrao, exactly the same. And it happened with Ander Herrera and Athletic Bilbao. They have a new team and they lack experience.

“We have missed out on players before, Franck Ribery and Patrick Vieira for example, but what is surprising is that someone wants to do a deal and only starts the process 12 hours before.

“It's the inexperience of the new people in charge. We have worked with them [United] before, with Peter Kenyon and David Gil and with Sir Alex Ferguson.

“We still have a good relationship with Manchester United but this is the exactly the same as what happened before with Coentrao and Herrera and we thought they would have learned from what happened in the past.”

Florentino Perez - AFP

Perez was also dismissive of a reported offer from United to help Madrid with any dialogue with FIFA after the deadline was missed.

The Real Madrid president then aimed a dig at United losing out of two summer targets to Chelsea and Manchester City.

“They entered into FIFA [the transfer matching system] at 00.00 and we entered at 00.02 so it was too late,” Perez said. “The offer from them was to make them look good. It was an offer from people who are not experts in the world of football.

“If it happens to the same team what happened with Pedro and with [Nicolas] Otamendi then it points to a lack of experience.”

OUR VIEW

Ed Woodward has just received a crash course in European football politics. There have been reports that with failed attempts to sign Gareth Bale, Thomas Muller and others this summer, the old European powers view Woodward and his team as lightweights with the inability to get big deals done, and Perez's quotes would seem to confirm that. It's an incredibly patronising thing to say, but Perez is the Godfather of Madrid and if you get drawn into a PR war with him, you better be ready for some dirt being thrown your way. Successive managers and players at Real Madrid have found that to their cost.