Manchester United have turned down a meeting with Erling Haaland’s agent Mino Raiola to discuss a deal for the Dortmund striker but they remain interested in his signature.
The youngster looks set to leave the Bundesliga this summer, particularly if Dortmund fail to qualify for the Champions League, and is being chased by a number of Europe’s top sides.
Raiola and Haaland’s father, former player Alf-Inge, were seen at Barcelona’s El Prat airport on Thursday to meet with the Spanish club to discuss a transfer.
A few hours later they flew to Madrid to discuss a possible transfer with Zidane’s side and the pair are due to fly to England to speak with clubs like Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool.
United were also expected to hold discussions with Haaland’s entourage but they have declined to speak to Raiola for now, according to The Sun.
United do not have a good relationship with the agent, who also represents Paul Pogba and has been publicly angling for the player to leave the theatre of dreams for several years.
Although United will not be holding any meeting with Raiola, they still want to battle for Haaland’s signature but Solskjaer suggested their pursuit would be conducted more discreetly than their rivals.
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Asked about Raiola and Haaland’s father being pictured in Barcelona, Solskjaer said: ‘I’m focusing on the next two months. There’s only so many places that a player can go to and for us, we want to focus on the ones who are here.
‘I’ve worked with Erling but it’s not right for me to talk about him. I can talk about him as an ex-coach of his but he will make his own mind up.
‘I think the way the world works at the moment, you’d like to do all your business on the quiet and all your talks on the quiet, but there are platforms everywhere, there’s news, the media make that more difficult now.
‘Hopefully, we can suddenly sit here with players that no one has written about! We conduct our recruitment business, our scouting, and the players that we are interested in, we do it the right way I hope and feel.
‘Who we’re interested in and who we can go for and who we will go for, I’m not going to comment on that.’
