Manchester United have formally made contact with the representatives of Atalanta midfielder Ederson Dos Santos as the club accelerates its summer recruitment planning around the single most pressing need in the squad, a midfield rebuild that will require at least two significant additions following the confirmed departure of Casemiro on a free transfer and the likely exit of Manuel Ugarte.

Transfer reporter Ben Jacobs confirmed the contact on X, writing: “Atalanta’s Ederson is a name on Manchester United’s midfield shortlist, as revealed earlier this month. Arsenal are also keeping tabs. Atletico Madrid have already agreed terms with the midfielder but have not yet reached a club-to-club agreement, and are also in talks with Wolves now for Joao Gomes.

Atalanta value Ederson around €50m and MUFC have made contact with the player side. Manchester United are looking to sign two midfielders this summer with Casemiro leaving and Manuel Ugarte potentially to be sold.”

The Atletico Madrid complication is the most interesting structural dimension of this story, because personal terms already agreed between Atletico and the player technically give the Spanish side an advantage in any race for his signature, yet the inability to reach a club-to-club agreement with Atalanta at the €45 to €50 million asking price has left a door wide open for Premier League clubs to enter.

Fabrizio Romano has been explicit about this dynamic on his YouTube channel, noting that Atletico’s reluctance to meet Atalanta’s valuation is increasingly drawing Premier League interest, and that Ederson’s contract expiry in June 2027, combined with no ongoing extension talks, means Atalanta are working against a ticking clock that reduces their leverage with each passing month.

Atalanta’s previous public valuation of the player reached as high as €75 million in 2025, before the absence of a contract extension began to systematically erode that number, with his agent Andre Cury telling Cadena SER that the transfer window represents an opportunity precisely because the expiring contract has brought the price down to somewhere between €30 and €50 million depending on which club Atalanta is negotiating with.

United’s director of football Jason Wilcox is described as an admirer of the 26-year-old, whose SciSports rating of 106.3 would make him the fourth-highest-rated player in the current squad, with data analytics firm SciSports assessing him as already a stronger player than Casemiro, whose career-long reputation has tended to overshadow the Brazilian compatriot who has been building a quietly excellent record in Serie A since joining Atalanta in January 2022.

The possibility of a swap deal involving Joshua Zirkzee heading to Bergamo in part-exchange for Ederson has been floated in Italian media, a creative structure that would reduce United’s cash outlay while simultaneously solving the problem of offloading a forward who has not justified his initial purchase price and whose path to regular first-team football at Old Trafford under Michael Carrick is unclear.

Arsenal’s involvement complicates United’s calculation, as any auction involving two Premier League giants and Atletico Madrid is likely to push the final fee toward the top of Atalanta’s stated range, with the Italian club historically resistant to accepting anything approaching a discount when multiple credible suitors are competing simultaneously, a negotiating posture that their recent track record in player sales fully supports.

Ederson’s profile is a natural fit for the system Michael Carrick has been implementing, combining defensive solidity and positional intelligence with the kind of progressive passing that allows a team to build through midfield rather than bypassing it, a quality that has been absent from United’s engine room on too many occasions this season and that the manager has consistently identified as a priority for his squad reconstruction.

The coming weeks will determine whether Atletico can finally close a club-to-club deal and remove themselves as a factor, or whether their inability to meet Atalanta’s terms ultimately hands United or Arsenal the opportunity to step in and complete a signing that represents one of the better value propositions in European football given where the player’s contract situation has left the asking price relative to his actual quality.

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