Manchester City have not had the best of weeks off the pitch, but their chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak could be forgiven for raising a wry smile when he watches Alexis Sánchez take to the field at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
Had fate taken a different course, Sánchez would have been wearing a sky blue jersey in the derby rather than United red.
Mubarak fought hard to bring Sánchez to City in the January transfer window, but Ed Woodward gazumped his opposite number and a couple of days later, the forward was tinkling the ivories to the tune of “Glory Glory Man Utd” at Old Trafford after signing a four-and-a-half year contract worth around £80 million.
As soon as Sánchez had played the final note of his bizarre unveiling video, the briefing battle between the two clubs commenced. City claimed that they walked away from negotiations as they refused to break their wage structure to pay Sánchez £350,000 per week (minus bonuses). United felt they had given their neighbours a bloody nose by signing one of the league’s top players and that the deal represented good value for money given that it was effectively a free transfer.
Nine months on, City privately admit they dodged a bullet by missing out on Sánchez, who has been a huge flop at United.
Now The Times can reveal that Sánchez wants to leave Old Trafford for Paris Saint-Germain. Sánchez is less than one year into his lucrative contract, but he wants to leave after failing to settle at the club and in the north-west.
It is understood that Sánchez’s agent, Fernando Felicevich, has started looking at potential suitors for his client and PSG have made it clear that they would be interested in him, although it remains to be seen whether United would sell.
Sánchez’s representatives held talks with PSG last summer and was keen to move to the French champions, but they pulled the plug on the deal after Kylian Mbappé became available.
José Mourinho is unhappy with Sánchez’s displays since he joined. At Carrington, a commonly used adjective to describe the forward’s performances is “average”, and the player himself is disheartened with his boss’s tactical instructions and management style.
Mourinho has been scratching his head, trying to work out how Sánchez became a shadow of the player who was so impressive at Arsenal. In conversations with his staff, Mourinho described Sánchez’s dramatic dip in form as a “mystery”.
This time last year, Sánchez was regarded as one of the top ten forwards in the world. In the 2016-17 season, he scored 34 goals for club and country. Since joining United, Sánchez has scored four goals in 28 appearances. He averages a goal every 532 minutes for United. A return of one goal almost every nine hours is no acceptable for the top earner at the club.
“He has lost confidence,” Arsène Wenger, Sánchez’s former manager at Arsenal, said this week. Wenger is right. There is a lack of adventure and spontaneity about Sánchez’s game. In his final season at Arsenal, Sánchez averaged 3.6 shots at goal per match in the Premier League. That number has dropped to 1.6 since he joined United. He shot at goal just once in his two Champions League appearances for United last term. He is devoid of self-belief, leaden-footed and behind the scenes at Carrington, he cuts a deeply unhappy figure.
There are many reasons behind Sánchez’s sadness. Firstly, those close to the player say he has found it hard to settle in the northwest. Sánchez lives in the quiet, leafy Cheshire village of Wilmslow with his fixer, Mauro, who he met during his time at Udinese and has lived with in Barcelona and London. The two are joined by Sánchez’s dogs Atom and Humber, who are so famous that they have their own Instagram account. Sánchez likes taking the two golden retrievers for walks in Wilmslow’s country lanes. He enjoys eating in Cibo, a local Italian restaurant too, but he misses the buzz of being in a big capital city. When at Arsenal, Sánchez rented a house in the North London suburb of Stanmore and also bought a penthouse apartment in the city centre. He loved his apartment because it gave him a chance to be in the heart of a bustling city. That is part of the reason why moving to Paris appeals to him.
Mayte Rodríguez, Sánchez’s former girlfriend, used to make regular visits to her ex-partner’s Wilmslow house from her homeland of Chile, where she is a famous actress. They were the Posh and Becks of Chile. Sánchez, was the shy boy who came from a poor neighbourhood and Rodríguez was the upper class actress who comes from a family of thespians.
When they were on separate continents, they would spend hours FaceTiming each other. After last season, the couple went on a romantic holiday, taking in their homeland, Brazil and the Maldives. But their relationship broke down in September, with Rodríguez citing the distance between them as the reason why. They were only together for 14 months, but those close to the striker say the relationship was “intense”. Sánchez’s team mates have noticed that the Chilean has been deeply affected by the break up and he has cut a largely glum figure in the dressing room ever since. Mourinho was aware of the break up but is of the opinion that his player should be able to put personal issues aside when he gets on to the pitch.
Just like he was during his time at Arsenal, Sánchez is an aloof figure at Carrington. Although his team mates admire his work ethic — he spends a large amount of time in the gym, sometimes listening to the Rocky soundtrack — there is little by way of emotional connection between Sánchez and his colleagues. He has few friends. Sánchez has a reasonable relationship with David De Gea, Juan Mata and Romelu Lukaku, but rarely speaks to his other team mates, who find that peculiar.
Although his English is poor, Sánchez is far more vocal on the pitch, too vocal for some players, who do not like it when the Chilean demands the ball every few seconds. There is a feeling in some parts of the dressing room that Sánchez is not a team player, although Mata, has some sympathy with the forward because he too has struggled to win Mourinho’s affection at times.
“Alexis is a great player, he is a big friend and I hope he keeps improving,” Mata said after Wednesday’s win over Juventus.
Mourinho gladly took Sánchez in January, but privately he has admitted that he would have preferred it had the club pushed to sign Ivan Perisic, the winger from Inter Milan, in the summer of 2017 instead. Mourinho feels the Croatian’s crossing ability is superior to that of Sánchez, which is an important asset in a team with such tall players like United. Mourinho’s staff have also taken umbrage to Sánchez answering back at times at Carrington. Sánchez respects Mourinho for the trophies he has won, but does not like parts of his management style. He believes Mourinho praises him most when he tracks back, rather than when he does something productive in attack. Colleagues have also noted that Sánchez looks intimidated when Mourinho gives his players the hairdryer treatment in the dressing room after defeats.
Sánchez’s form has improved slightly in recent weeks, but he is still not scoring as many goals as Mourinho would like and the Portuguese prefers to use Anthony Martial on the left now instead.
There has not been much media attention on this week’s derby in Chile. Most of the articles in the country’s newspapers about Sánchez have concentrated on a film about the forward’s youth, which he spent on the dusty pitches of Tocopilla. Alejandro Fernández, the director of Alexis, La Pelicula, this week chose Marco Baeza, 12, to play the part of a young Sánchez after sifting through over a thousand applications for the role.
“The idea is to make a quality product, comparable to a Hollywood film,” Fernández said.
It is hard to believe that footage of any of Sánchez’s performances at Old Trafford will make the cut. Unless something dramatically changes in the coming weeks, his United showreel will be destined for the bargain bin instead.
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