United had offered €100m at the time in 2018, but then Napoli coach Carlo Ancelotti threatened to resign if his captain at the time had been sold.
“Napoli had received an offer worth €100m from Manchester United, but they rejected it,” Koulibaly recalled on the Zack en Roue Libre Podcast.
“Ancelotti came to me and said: ‘I came here to win the Scudetto. What do you want to do?’ I replied: ‘I wanted to leave, why?'” He said he knew about the offer, but if I had left, he would have resigned the following day.”
“I thought my time at Napoli was over,” he added. “I had given my all. I had spent four seasons there, and I could have had the best contract of my career.
“In the evening, Ancelotti called me and said: ‘Come to my room.’ He opened the door and said: ‘Ah, mon ami Kalidou!’ He spoke French, we were both wearing pyjamas. I was shocked. I explained to him that I wasn’t happy and that I thought the president had lacked respect towards me for the way he spoke.”
In the end, the deal was blocked. However, four years later Koulibaly joined Chelsea in 2022.