Alexis Sanchez reacts during Newcastle vs Manchester United (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
Alexis Sanchez says he knew straight away that something wasn’t quite right at Manchester United after his transfer from rivals Arsenal.
The Chile international had been a star player for the Gunners, up there with the very finest in world football at the time, but it was totally different for him at Old Trafford.
Sanchez flopped spectacularly at Man Utd, but upon leaving the club he insisted all was not as it seemed.
We may never know for sure precisely what went wrong for Sanchez in his ill-fated United spell, but the player himself certainly painted a picture.
In old quotes from the Guardian, Sanchez clearly implied that he hadn’t been given a full picture of just how bad things were at the club, with his error becoming clear after just one training session.
It’s not clear what Sanchez witnessed, but he stated that the team were not a family, and that he immediately asked his agent if his contract could be terminated and if he could go back to Arsenal.
Alexis Sanchez on what went wrong for him at Manchester United
“I want to tell you about my period at United, about many things that were said and that made me look bad,” he said.
“I got the opportunity to go to United and it seemed tempting to me. It was something nice for me, because, when I was a kid, I liked that club a lot.
“I ended up signing without much information about what was happening in the move. The first days that I was with my colleagues, sometimes there are things that you do not realise until you arrive.
“The first training I had I realised many things. I came home and I told my representative: ‘Can’t the contract be terminated to return to Arsenal?’ They start laughing and I told them that something did not sit right with me. It [the contract] had already been signed.”
He added: “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.
“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 on to the pitch, and since there needed to be someone to blame, they blamed me.”
So many other big names have flopped at United in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, with big names like Paul Pogba, Angel Di Maria, Romelu Lukaku and Jadon Sancho also all struggling to perform there.
Sanchez’s story is quite remarkable, though, and it is perhaps another reminder that leaving Arsenal might not always be as good a decision as it seems.
