Alan Shearer has explained just how close he came to signing for Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United in 1996, with the England legend even going house-hunting in the city.
After winning the Premier League with Blackburn in 1994/95 and starring for England at Euro 96, Shearer attracted the attention from Europe's elite, with Real Madrid and Manchester United both attempting to sign the prolific striker.
The boyhood Newcastle fan ultimately ended up choosing a move to St. James' Park over Old Trafford or the Bernabeu, however, completing a world-record £15m move in July 1996.
Alan Shearer reveals talks with Manchester United
"I got the call from Manchester United," Shearer told Ally McCoist on TNT Sports. "It was really strange because I was meeting Kevin Keegan and Sir Alex on the same day in the same house, and I met Kevin in the morning and Sir Alex in the afternoon. It was actually David Platt's mother-in-law's house. We'd sort of taken over the house because we wanted it all done in secret.
"I remember Sir Alex coming in the afternoon after the talks going really well in the morning with Kevin, and his first words to me were, ‘Am I seeing you first or have you seen Kevin this morning?’
"And I went, ‘I spoke to Kevin this morning’, and he goes, excuse my language, he went, ‘That's me F*****!’ Those were his first words to me."
Despite Shearer's obvious allegiances to Newcastle, making a decision initially proved a difficult one, with both Sir Alex Ferguson and Kevin Keegan making their own personal attempts to persuade Shearer in joining them - for Ferguson, though, nothing he said would've worked in the end.
"But anyway, talks went really, really well, and I thought at one stage I was going to go, and I even went house hunting around Manchester for a day," Shearer said.
"I got another call off Kevin a few days later saying, ‘Can I have another half an hour with you?’ And I had half an hour with him, and I just thought, ‘What am I waiting for? I've gotta go back home.’ And that was it.
"I rang the missus up because the meeting again with Kevin was in Manchester and I said ‘There's going to be a taxi come in half an hour, and you've got to pack me a bag and put it in the taxi and send it to Manchester Airport’. I went and I signed for Newcastle."
The full episode of Ally’s Social Club with Alan Shearer will be available to watch on TNT Sports 1 at 18:15 tonight and on TNT Sports’ YouTube channel from Friday.
