The Barcelona striker held talks with then-manager Sir Alex Ferguson in the early days of his stint at Borussia Dortmund but the German club refused to let him make the move.

He told FourFourTwo magazine: “I said yes to Manchester United. I think it was after my second season at Dortmund.

“I was talking to Sir Alex Ferguson – my English wasn’t good then and with his Scottish accent, I was trying to understand everything but it was very tough to understand every word he was saying.

“But as a 22- or 23-year-old guy, I was so happy to speak with Sir Alex Ferguson – he wants you and you say, ‘OK.’

“But I told Borussia Dortmund that I wanted to join Manchester United and Dortmund said no.

“If they had said yes, I was probably going to play for Manchester United.”

Before joining Dortmund, the 36-year-old forward was tipped to sign for Blackburn Rovers in 2010 but the Icelandic ash cloud prevented him from flying to the UK to meet with then-boss Sam Allardyce, but Robert has now insisted the move was unlikely anyway.

He said: “I have to say it wasn’t so close.

“I had the offer and they were interested in taking me there but I only wanted to visit to see how it looked – the club, the professionalism, what the training ground looked like.

“That’s why I decided I could maybe travel there – to see – because I had a lot of offers.

“But I knew that if I was going to go somewhere, I wanted to go to a club playing in the Europa League or internationally.

“I was planning to fly to Blackburn but couldn’t because of the volcano.

“Maybe people thought that when I was in Blackburn to see the training ground and the stadium, they’d try to convince me I should join them, but I was only visiting to experience it.”