Cape Town - Arsenal were never interested in him, City were the favourites to land him but all Radamel Falcao wanted a move to Real Madrid.
The Colombia striker had his heart set on a move to the Bernabeu and tweeted "#HalaMadrid Dream come true" on his official account on Saturday evening before later removing the message according to teamtalk.com.
He later claimed that his account was hacked.
The tweet that got away:
Falcao's agent Jorge Mendes tried to manufacture a deal to Real Madrid but failed.
"Jorge Mendes tried all year, in fact the whole summer, to move him to Real Madrid," Sky Sports' Spanish football expert Guillem Balague.
"Real Madrid have been saying all along for the whole summer that they just weren't interested in Falcao.
"They wanted a striker, but not somebody to be challenging Karim Benzema; they wanted somebody who was happy to be a number two - a Diego Lopez type of figure who would be happy to accept that there was a way of playing, Benzema would be the number nine and they could come on and do something in the second half of games.
"Chicharito fills that gap, but Falcao was never the kind of player they wanted. The fact Jorges Mendes hasn't been able to get that deal done means that Real Madrid were never open to that possibility."
Balague says Manchester United's move for Falcao came at the last minute and according to the journalist rivals City were in pole position to sign Falcao until Sunday.
"I never heard anything about Arsenal at all. I don't think Arsenal were interested." said Balague on the reported interest of Arsenal.
"They only wanted a central midfielder who could play centre-back and the budget they've got is £7million or £8million - and with that in mind, Falcao was never a possibility.
"In the case of Manchester City, it became clear that Alvaro Negredo was wanted by Valencia and the deal wasn't done quickly because Valencia thought all along that City were waiting to see if they could replace him with Falcao.
"There were conversations between City and his agents and nobody could deny that, but when Manchester United came into the equation late on Sunday night they said yes to everything and the deal went through."