Manchester United received another reminder of their transfer mistakes at the Ballon d’Or ceremony, with the final nail in the coffin of their Rasmus Hojlund decision.

This is not a criticism piece of Rasmus Hojlund, who was simply thrown into an unwinnable situation the moment he arrived at Man Utd.

He is doing fairly well for himself at Napoli and rebuilding his career after the vicious cycle he found himself trapped in at Old Trafford.

Having said that, it doesn’t vindicate United’s decision to sign him, especially after what happened at the Ballon d’Or ceremony.

Man Utd needed to sign Ballon d’Or winner Harry Kane

It’s a tale as old as time that Man Utd were set to sign Player A, only for them to pivot to Player B for some reason, and then their career trajectories go in polar opposite directions.

In the summer of 2023, with United needing a marquee striker, Harry Kane was itching to move on from Spurs, and his priority was staying in the Premier League.

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Erik ten Hag wanted Kane at all costs, the player wanted to come, and the club was clearly willing to go big to make that happen.

Apparently not big enough, as they spent north of £70m on Hojlund with less than ten Serie A goals, but refused to add an additional £30m to basically guarantee 25 PL goals a season.

The worst fears about Hojlund came true, as the job was simply too big for him at that stage of his career, while Kane joined Bayern Munich instead.

Kane went from strength to strength, culminating in a Ballon d’Or win, the first for an Englishman since 2001, while Hojlund has become a cautionary tale for young players joining Man Utd.

It was simply another case of being penny-wise, pound-foolish, as United made their squad worse by signing Hojlund, and in trying to save a few million on Kane, they ended up spending another £70m on Sesko a few years later to replace Hojlund.

They could have simply signed Kane and enjoyed more than half a decade of reliable goalscoring plus model dressing room presence, happy to strengthen other areas of the team.

Instead, they kept applying a rotating cast of expensive, but not good enough, bandages requiring replacements every few years, which ends up costing even more.

Kane becoming literally the best footballer in the world is the final nail in the coffin for that thinking.