Carlos Baleba to Manchester United: What we know so far
Carlos Baleba to Manchester United: Twelve months of circular conversations, stalled negotiations and quiet back-channel diplomacy, and this one still hasn’t died. Manchester United‘s pursuit of Carlos Baleba remains very much alive heading into the summer of 2026, though “alive” is doing a lot of work there, given how little progress has actually been made. Brighton have barely budged on their valuation, and every time it looks like the two clubs might find common ground, the Seagulls pull the rug away.
The original asking price of £100m last summer effectively killed the deal before it started. Fabrizio Romano confirmed that personal terms between Baleba and United were agreed back in August 2025, a verbal arrangement the player considers very much still in effect. Brighton, for their part, refused to sanction anything less than their £100m ceiling, and the midfielder stayed put on the south coast, unhappily, by most accounts.
The numbers have shifted slightly since then. Reports from a Swiss journalist, Sacha Tavolieri, suggested Brighton would accept around €85m (roughly £75m) heading into 2026, a meaningful drop but still a significant outlay for a player who had a distinctly inconsistent 2025/26 campaign. Baleba made 30 Premier League appearances for the Seagulls, registering no goals and no assists, a far cry from the effervescent showings that put him on every top club’s shortlist in the first place. His average match rating sat at 6.46 on StatMuse, noticeably below the 6.74 he averaged across his career to date, and he completed 90 minutes on just three occasions.
Carlos Baleba to Manchester United: The player’s form and the fee problem
None of that has put United off entirely. Journalist Alex Crook told talkSPORT that the club still rates Baleba highly and views him as the long-term Casemiro successor they’ve been after since the Brazilian’s departure. The thinking at Old Trafford is that his underlying attributes, ball-winning intensity, progressive carrying, and physical dominance in central midfield, haven’t evaporated despite a quieter season. Yet the sticking point remains brutally simple: Brighton’s owner, Tony Bloom, doesn’t do discounts, and his negotiating posture has frustrated United at every turn.
Crook put it bluntly: sources close to Brighton laughed off suggestions the club would accept anything near £50m, pointing instead to Moises Caicedo’s £115m Chelsea deal as the benchmark they’ve set in their heads. That’s a stretch by almost any reasonable standard, given how Baleba performed last term, though Brighton’s commercial leverage is real. The 22-year-old, who joined from Lille in August 2023, is contracted at the Amex until June 2028, with an option for a further year, so they have no urgency whatsoever to sell.
Meanwhile, United have already confirmed Ederson from Atalanta as one midfield addition this summer, which complicates the financial arithmetic considerably. Aurelien Tchouameni, Alex Scott and Sander Berge have all emerged as alternative names in the club’s midfield rebuild discussion, giving INEOS genuine alternatives if Baleba’s price tag stays in the £75m-plus territory. Reports from late June even suggested United had ended their pursuit entirely and begun looking at a different Brighton midfielder, though that story lacked any named alternative. Whether it was a genuine pivot or a negotiating tactic leaked through friendly journalists, nobody has said definitively.
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Carlos Baleba to Manchester United might yet happen this window. It might not. Brighton have the player, the contract length, and the resolve to hold firm, and that combination tends to win.
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