July 27.
Less than twenty days remained before the start of the new Premier League season, and Manchester United's players set off for the United States to prepare for their final preseason friendly.
Their opponent was Napoli from Serie A.
Like the two matches on their China tour, Manchester United's matches in the United States were still commercial in nature.
However, considering that Napoli were also from one of Europe's top five leagues, some fans believed that the match against Napoli would be Manchester United's real warm-up match, their preparation for the new Premier League season.
From that perspective, the match between Manchester United and Napoli was quite worth watching, as both sides hoped to test their form in a high-level match before the season began.
The Daily Mail—Manchester United's friendly against Napoli may have another purpose; Erik ten Hag hoped to use it to assess Victor Osimhen's abilities.
In order to buy a suitable striker, everyone at Manchester United—from the management and coaches to the fans—was at their wits' end.
The reason was simple.
Manchester United's starting lineup was ridiculously strong, while complete strikers were relatively scarce treasures in modern football. Strikers who could fit into Manchester United's starting lineup were even rarer.
At present, there were only three strikers with a 100% ability to match the strength of Manchester United's lineup: Harry Kane, Robert Lewandowski, and Erling Haaland.
All three were indispensable to their respective clubs, and trying to take Kane or Lewandowski away would be harder than climbing to the heavens.
As for Haaland...
Compared to Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund were more likely to let him go, because a transfer fee of over 100 million euros was already an astronomical sum for Borussia Dortmund.
However, another problem arose here.
According to media reports, Haaland's