Mikel Obi: the Manchester United deal that fell apart

A deal announced, a shirt held up

Few transfer sagas have unravelled quite as dramatically as Manchester United's attempt to sign Mikel. Just days after his 18th birthday, United announced they had struck an agreement with Lyn and, separately, directly with the player himself, bypassing his agents entirely. Mikel signed a four-year contract and was pictured at a hastily arranged press conference holding aloft a United shirt bearing the number 21. Reports valued the move at £4 million, with Mikel due to arrive at Old Trafford that January.

It looked done. It was anything but.

Chelsea's counter-claim and a player who vanishes

Chelsea issued a counter-claim, insisting they already had an agreement in place with Mikel and his representatives, a claim Lyn denied, though it later emerged Mikel had trained with Chelsea's first team under José Mourinho the previous summer. Mikel himself then began receiving threatening phone calls in Norway and was given a security guard. During a Norwegian Cup match in May 2005, he simply went missing from the stands.

His disappearance triggered a media storm and a police investigation after a Lyn director alleged he had been kidnapped, a claim later echoed by United assistant manager Carlos Queiroz, who accused Chelsea of involvement. In reality, Mikel had travelled to London with one of his agents. Speaking from a hotel there nine days later, he said he had been pressured into signing United's contract without proper representation, and declared that Chelsea were the club he actually wanted to join.

FIFA steps in, United's deal is undone

United complained to FIFA about the conduct of Chelsea and Mikel's agents, but the complaint was dismissed in August 2005 for lack of evidence. Lyn, for their part, lodged their own complaint after Mikel failed to return from the tournament he'd been playing in. FIFA ruled that he must go back to Lyn to see out his contract there, leaving the validity of the United deal unresolved. After a delay of more than a month, Mikel complied.

Rather than let FIFA rule on the contract itself, Chelsea intervened directly, negotiating a three-way settlement with Lyn and United in June 2006. Under its terms, Mikel's registration passed to Chelsea, United agreed to drop their option on him, and Chelsea paid United £12 million and Lyn £4 million, a £16 million resolution to a transfer United had announced as complete more than a year earlier. The fallout continued even after that: a Lyn director was later convicted of fraud and false accusation over his conduct during the affair, and Chelsea pursued a High Court claim against Lyn and the director concerning the settlement's validity.

What came after

Mikel went on to spend 11 years at Stamford Bridge, becoming one of the defining midfielders of Chelsea's most successful era, two Premier League titles, four FA Cups and the 2011–12 Champions League among the honours. He later changed his preferred name to Mikel John Obi, had spells in China, at Middlesbrough, Trabzonspor, Stoke City and Kuwait SC, and won bronze with Nigeria at the 2016 Olympics before retiring from international football in 2019.

But it is worth remembering that for a brief, strange period in 2005, Manchester United genuinely believed they had got their man, right up until he vanished from a stand in Oslo and resurfaced in west London wearing blue.