For two years Erik ten Hag said almost nothing about Manchester United. That ended on Tuesday morning, when the first half of a long interview with The Athletic landed and the former United manager finally put his version of the end on the record. The short summary: he believes the club made him a set of promises in the summer of 2024 and broke every one of them.
The Ibiza deal that fell apart
The background matters. Ten Hag looked finished before the 2024 FA Cup final, with United openly sounding out Thomas Tuchel and Roberto De Zerbi. Then his side beat Pep Guardiola's champions 2-1 at Wembley, and the hierarchy changed its mind. Two weeks after that, during his holiday in Ibiza, the extra year in his contract was triggered.
"I wouldn't go on with only one year left," he says. "So I said, I need an extra year and we have to do it together. They promised me loyalty, they promised me backing, they promised communication, that we get aligned. We spoke about the issues. But the promises, they didn't keep."
The example he reaches for is Scott McTominay, who had scored 10 goals that season and who ten Hag says he specifically asked the club not to sell. McTominay went to Napoli that summer for 30.5m euros, money United used to buy Manuel Ugarte. "In Ibiza, we agreed. I said, no selling Scott McTominay," ten Hag says. "And in the end they sold him. I got, of course, very embarrassed and disappointed." He was dismissed on 28 October 2024, the day after a 2-1 defeat at West Ham left United 14th with 11 points from nine games.
Ronaldo, the laps and the player power that followed
On Cristiano Ronaldo, ten Hag is blunt in a way he never was while employed. "He let the team down, and he let me down, because we planned with him," he says, before describing a player who pulled out of training sessions, did not raise his heart rate to the required level when he did train, and completed only two of the three laps ten Hag ordered after the 4-0 defeat at Brentford in August 2022. Worse, in his telling, Ronaldo was advising team-mates to save their legs in training. The Athletic put the comments to Ronaldo's representative and had no reply by the time of publication.
Ten Hag links that to what he calls the Madrid connection, meaning Ronaldo, Casemiro and Raphael Varane, three winners who between them had 14 Champions Leagues. "I can say I think that's what the Madrid connection brought in, that players are powerful and they want to decide," he says. He will not discuss Lisandro Martinez specifically, which is pointed given Martinez was fined internally for his comments after the 2-0 defeat by Atletico Madrid last week and then made available for selection straight away.
The Kane fight he lost, and a word for Carrick
The transfer section is the one United supporters will chew over longest. Frenkie de Jong was the first-choice midfielder and said no. Declan Rice was the alternative, and West Ham would not sell; he joined Arsenal in 2023 in a package worth £105m and captained them to the title last season. Up front, ten Hag wanted one name. "I said to them, I want only one player, and you know who. I fought for it." That was Harry Kane, then 30. The answer was no, Kane went to Bayern Munich for 110m euros, and he has since scored 157 goals in 155 games there.
Danny Welbeck, then 33 and at Brighton, was interested but never received a formal offer because the executive group kept changing. Brian Brobbey was wanted in 2022 and the move came too late. Ten Hag now runs recruitment at FC Twente, his boyhood club in Enschede, where he says the pressure is regional rather than global but real enough. He still watches United closely, and on the current head coach he is unambiguous. "It is not the solution to dismiss him. 100 per cent not," he says of Michael Carrick. "Let him do his process."
Interview context: Part one of a two-part Erik ten Hag interview by Laurie Whitwell for The Athletic, published via Sky Sports on Tuesday 20 October 2026. Ten Hag managed Manchester United from 2022 until 28 October 2024, winning the League Cup in 2023 and the FA Cup in 2024. Part two is due on Wednesday.
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