God, this transfer just gets worse and worse as time passes
It didn’t take long after Alexis Sanchez left Arsenal for Manchester United for the transfer to be seen for what it truly was: a massive mistake that should never have happened.
The Chilean striker arrived at Old Trafford amid much fanfare and a stupid piano-playing announcement video – especially after reports emerged that United had trumped rivals City with their bid – but things quickly went to shit.
He never settled, never performed, and is now with Inter Milan after spending much of last season on loan at the Serie A club.
Until now, though, Sanchez had never spoken out about the move, or revealed how he felt about it. Now he has, and his comments are certainly interesting.
“I accepted the opportunity to go to United, it felt tempting and it was something good for me, I liked this club a lot when I was a kid. Eventually I signed but I didn’t ask for information on what was happening inside the club,” said Sanchez on Instagram, commenting that his time at the club was now at an end and that he wanted to have his say on the matter.
“Sometimes there are things that you don’t realise until you get there, and I remember the first training session I had, I realised a lot of things.
“After the session I got home and I told my family and my agent ‘can you not rip up the contract to go back to Arsenal?’. They laughed, I told them there’s something that doesn’t sit right, it doesn’t seem good.
“But I already signed, I was already there. After the first few months I carried on having the same feeling, we weren’t united as a team in that moment.”
Now, this begs questions about Sanchez in numerous ways: most notably, how does a footballer move to a team – managed by Jose Mourinho as well, remember – without asking how the club plan to deploy him? Weird.
During the chat, he also hit out at journalists who criticised him during his underwhelming time at Old Trafford.
“I’m telling you my experience, the journalists at times would speak without knowing the facts and it hurt, they had no idea what was going on inside the club,” he said.
“They said it was my fault, and this, and that, but sometimes a player depends on the environment, the family that is created around him, and I think that in that moment we weren’t really a family.
“And that translated onto the pitch, and since there needed to be someone to blame, they blamed me.”
Finally, he recalled a game against West Ham in which he wasn’t selected, and pondered how he went from being of the league’s best players to being dropped against the Hammers, of all teams.
“I remember a game against West Ham, I wasn’t picked and that never happened during my career,” he said.
“That changed a lot, it really bothered me and that day I told myself that it couldn’t be possible to go from one of the best players in the Premier League to that in the space of five months.
“That bothered me a little, I got home and I was very sad for what happened, the next day I put in a double training session – as I’ve always been, I demand the best from myself in my job, I love what I do, I like football a lot.”
