For all of Thursday, D.C. United general manager Dave Kasper had been engaged in talks with Paris Saint-Germain. His star midfielder Luciano Acosta was with him in Paris. A deal to send the player to the European giants seemed imminent. And then the bottom fell out.



Thus concludes one of the wildest transfer situations in recent league history, as Acosta will stay with United this season after the club had been engaged in negotiations with PSG for a few weeks, culminating in a formal offer for Acosta’s services that surfaced in the past few days (first reported publicly on Wednesday by the Washington Post).



When push came to shove on Thursday, though, a few issues emerged.



Multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic that money was one of these issues. In the end, one source said the two clubs ended up about $4-6 million dollars apart.



In reality, there’s much more to the story than that. According to multiple sources, United’s...