Hulk has revealed that Manchester City had a €60 million bid to sign him from Porto rejected back in 2011 - a move the Brazilian only discovered had taken place a year after the event.
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Manchester City’s journey to the pinnacle of English football has been packed with blockbuster signings, including two this summer that each broke the club's transfer record.
However, sometimes the occasional emerging stories about deals that never quite happened can be just as interesting as the transfers that did materialise.
It is common knowledge just how close the likes of Dani Alves and Lucas Paqueta came to Etihad moves, and depending on which story you believe both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were ready to pull on sky blue shirts at one point.
A more surprising example has surfaced in recent days - Brazilian winger Hulk, often referred to as one of the best players never to feature in Europe's top five leagues. As it turns out, the Blues came far closer to landing him than anyone realised at the time - not least the player himself, who was kept completely in the dark.
Hulk Reveals Man City’s Rejected Bid
Speaking to Brazilian legend Romário on ESPN Brasil, Hulk explained that offers from England were a regular occurrence during his time at Porto, only for the Portuguese club to repeatedly stand firm.
“I spent four years at Porto and, in every transfer window, I had the possibility of moving to England,” Hulk said. “But they always kept me and stressed that they didn’t want to sell me.”
The most significant of those approaches, though, came from City in the wake of a glittering season on Porto’s part.
“In 2011, we won the Europa League, we were unbeaten national champions, we had that spectacular year and Porto sold Falcao to Atlético Madrid,” he recalled. “Straight after that, they received an offer of €60 million from Manchester City to sell me and they didn’t want to sell me.
“The club said no because they’d just sold Falcao and didn’t need to make any more money. I only found out about it later.”
How Everything Could Have Changed With Hulk at Man City
As the forward tells it, he had no idea the bid had ever been made. He stayed put in Portugal for one more campaign before completing a €60m move to Russian side Zenit Saint Petersburg the following year, and it was only while mulling over that switch - with a contract extension also on the table at Porto - that he discovered the truth.
“It was then that I found out about Manchester City’s offer from the previous year and discovered they hadn’t sold me to England,” he added. “So I thought it was time to leave. I was going to play in the Champions League and decided to try a different kind of football.”
When you remember the timing of this alleged failed bid, it becomes clear just how much a different outcome could have changed the cause of Premier League history.
The summer of 2011 saw Manchester City flex their considerable financial muscle under their ambitious (and still relatively new, at the time) ownership, with the likes of Sergio Aguero, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy arriving to transform the squad - and City went on to be crowned Premier League champions for the very first time just months later
Would Hulk, a powerhouse forward in the form of his life, have slotted seamlessly into that project - or is it even possible that either Nasri or Aguero would have been unattainable if such a big portion of the budget had been spent on the Brazilian instead?
Hulk can hardly complain about how things panned out. Now 40 years of age and still performing at a high level back in his homeland with Fluminense, the veteran has racked up an astonishing 145 goals since returning to Brazil at 35 - a timely reminder of just what Manchester City were trying to land all those years ago.
For Manchester City, though, the story does make room for a fascinating slice of alternate history. A €60 million deal in 2011 would have obliterated the club’s transfer record and delivered one of the planet’s most explosive forwards at the precise moment their empire was being constructed - but there may have been no Aguero, no 93:20 and a completely different story over the last decade and a half.