Madrid have offered the teenager forward a multi‑year contract and hope to bring him to the Bernabeu in January as per reports this week.
Gabriel has not trained with United since September after he requested to leave the side due to a lack of game time, despite being just 16 years old.
United are proud of their record of having at least one academy graduate in every matchday squad since October 1937, but there is a limit to how far they will go to push youth into the squad.
Is Real Madrid the right move?
As Gabriel prepared for his next step, Giggs made the comparison to Arsenal's Max Dowman who hasn't thrown a tantrum in North London.
"So far in his career everything is going fine, why would you disrupt that? You’re on the right track," Giggs said of Gabriel's situation. "I trained at 15, I didn’t play for the first team until two years later so you have to have that patience that people just don’t seem to have at the moment.
"And believe it or not, first-team football for Man United is completely different to playing in the youth team, playing pre-season for the first team, it’s completely different," Giggs added.
"That first game, yeah, you might do alright, but you have to do it for 40, 50 games a season. You’re going to get injuries, loss of form, bad results, so you have to be patient. If you’re on the right trajectory then just bide your time, no matter how good you are.
"Max Dowman is unbelievable but he’s not playing for Arsenal at the moment," Giggs noted. "I’m sure he’ll bide his time, I’m sure he’s getting impatient, but he’s not kicking off, he knows in a couple of years time he might be the main man for Arsenal."
Rio Ngumoha joined Chelsea's academy at age 8 before moving to Liverpool at age 15 in 2024. Liverpool were ordered to pay a minimum compensation of £2.8M in February 2026. Now he is worth more than £25M. Gabriel could find himself in a similar situation as United miss out on one of Europe's top young talents.