Arsenal legend rejected Man United after private Ferguson meeting

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Patrick Vieira has revealed he turned down the chance to join Manchester United during his time at Arsenal, despite sitting down for a private meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson.

The former Arsenal captain spent nine years in north London, winning three Premier League titles and four FA Cups under Arsene Wenger before leaving for Inter Milan in 2005. He remains one of the defining figures of the Wenger era, and the midfield heartbeat of the Invincibles side of 2003/04.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Vieira explained that Arsenal's fiercest rivals of that era were not the only club circling.

"I had the opportunity to move to Real Madrid a couple of times and I even had an opportunity to move to Manchester United," Vieira said.

The meeting with Ferguson

"I had a meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson. Full respect, I couldn't say no to meeting him because he was an important figure in the Premier League," the Frenchman added.

"We met and we talked and he explained to me his vision that he had for Manchester United and the team that he wanted to build."

That vision was a detailed one. According to Vieira, Ferguson mapped out exactly where he would fit into a United side already stacked with talent.

"He wanted to play me with Roy Keane, [Ryan] Giggs on the left-hand side, David Beckham on the right-hand side and [Paul] Scholes to play behind [Ruud] Van Nistelrooy, so it wasn't a bad team."

The prospect of Vieira and Keane lining up together rather than colliding in the Highbury tunnel is one of the great what-ifs of the Premier League's most heated rivalry.

Why he stayed

Vieira ultimately decided his future lay at Arsenal, where Wenger was assembling a squad that would go on to make history.

"But I couldn't leave Arsenal, I was too happy there and we were on the way of building something quite really special for the club and that's the way it was," he said.

"When you do well, of course there's teams who are interested and then you have to make a decision. But the decision for me was to stay at Arsenal because I felt the love from the club, from the players and from the fans.

"Everything was there for me to grow up as a player and to achieve what I wanted to."

That decision paid off. Vieira captained the Gunners through the unbeaten 2003/04 campaign and scored 31 goals in total for the club, including the strike that sealed the Invincibles' title. He was inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2022, with the accompanying statement noting that he "came to the Premier League a relative unknown but left having redefined the role of a central midfielder."

Now 50, Vieira is in charge of Senegal, continuing a coaching career that has already taken in Nice, Crystal Palace, Strasbourg and Genoa. His standing among Arsenal supporters, though, was secured long ago — and this latest revelation only adds another layer to it.