Marcos Rojo has said former Manchester United head coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer only started Harry Maguire because of his record price tag for a defender.
The England international became the most expensive defender of all time after he moved to United in the summer of 2019 for a record fee of €87.1m from fellow Premier League club Leicester City.
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“That year [2019], I was doing really well in England, I was playing in the Europa League,” said Rojo, who now plays for Boca Juniors. “I was really angry with the coach. Maguire was playing, now thanks to God, they dropped him and Licha [Lisandro] Martinez is playing.”
Rojo made just nine appearances for United in the 2019-20 campaign before re-joining boyhood club Estudiantes on loan in January 2020.
The Argentinian defender revealed that during that season he asked Solskjaer for an explanation as to why Maguire was starting despite the player making “mistakes every Sunday.”
“One day I went to his [Solskjaer] office to tell him to let me leave or put me in [the starting line-up],” Rojo said.
“He knew that it was wrong that I wasn’t playing all the time. He told me that they had paid so much for him that he had to play no matter what. And I would tell him, ‘let me play because this guy is making huge mistakes every Sunday.””
Rojo scored two goals in 122 appearances in his six years at United and left Old Trafford on a permanent transfer to Boca in February 2021.
Maguire, 30, has since lost his spot in Erik ten Hag’s starting XI at Old Trafford this season to Raphael Varane and has made only 13 league appearances.
