Jose Mourinho battle former club Real Madrid to keep David De Gea at Old Trafford

José Mourinho sees the Manchester United goalkeeper as essential to a successful first season at Old Trafford and will do anything and everything he can to halt a move that has seemed a certainty since last summer’s comic-book castrophe .

Real madrid club president Florentino Perez sees bringing the Spanish number one home to Madrid as a moral obligation after a personal promise to the player, but new United manager Jose Mourinho is loathe to lose the club’s best player over the past three seasons. The battle lines are drawn and Mourinho is about to cross paths again with his old employer, just as he did with Courtois on his return to Chelsea.

The club blanco does, however, have an ace up their sleeve: a clause in the player’s contract, signed on September 11 2015, which includes the condition that Real Madrid can buy the goalkeeper for a fee close to 50 million euro before a June 15 2016 deadline . In another indication that this deal is about to happen, the madrileño has made it very clear that he does not wish to endure a repeat of the frustrating summer farrago of that famous night in summer 2015.

A postponement rather than a new pronouncement, De Gea has been waiting for this move for a year, and wants to sign on the dotted line so he can focus on his responsibilities as Spain’s no.1 in the continent’s national competition . If the deal does not go through, Real Madrid will owe the player compensation of 10.9 million euro as the result of a private agreement reached last summer. Florentino, who considers the Manchester United stopper the best in the world, sees the 25 year-old as a long-term solution between the sticks at the Bernabéu.

Save a Mourinho plot, or sabotage to the famous Bernabéu fax machine, David de Gea will be a Real Madrid player within a matter of days.