The life of a Manchester United legend.
After being hauled off at half-time of the UEFA Super Cup against Real Madrid, 21-year-old teenager Alexis Sanchez went on to declare himself the best player in the world — something his former international teammate and fellow Venezuelan Oscar de la Hoya has once again given his opinion on.
“Some times you’re going to make comments,” De la Hoya said to NBC, as he spoke about Sanchez’s stratospheric quotes in the interim. “You just say what you think. No reason for anything more than that.
“But in the case of Sanchez, what he said was an insult to those that feel that way. A disrespect to those players who have done that as well.
“Alexis Sanchez took it way too far. Those kind of comments, they should be taken with some serious time and thought before they make them.”
The Super Cup defeat was not Sanchez’s first foray into failure. After his £500,000-a-week ($700,000) switch from Barcelona to the reds, he was far from a success, with just six Premier League goals for them during his three years at Old Trafford. He struggled against tough opposition and failed to settle on the pitch.
His early-season exit from United was hardly a surprise, though, as he struggled to adapt to English football.
To make matters worse, Alexis’ family was also displaced when a police investigation into the death of his mother — who suffered from heart and kidney ailments — was launched. His cousin, who led a campaign to call for a coroner’s inquest into her death, was murdered. It took a while for Sanchez to rekindle his love for the game, and he almost joined Manchester City — and his family — in January.
None of this — the divorce from his family or his horrible start to life in England — can compare to losing the championship against Real Madrid at the Seidman Stadium. Despite being given three days to recover, Sanchez was recalled to the squad to start in the Super Cup, and made an immediate impact by scoring the opening goal of the game, but his display was negated by the heroic Brazilian goalkeeper Keylor Navas.
De la Hoya said: “The one thing that can happen is that he comes back and he settles in. Now, he has to learn how to get involved in a match, learn how to compete, learn how to compete against defenders who can run at him on a daily basis, learn how to compete against opposing teams that are good enough to challenge him for game-changing moments in the match.”
In the wake of the Sanchez saga, Real Madrid and Los Blancos president Florentino Perez was quizzed on the reality of Chelsea’s relationship with Pogba and all the conjecture about whether the World Cup winner was a better fit for Zinedine Zidane’s squad than for Jose Mourinho’s.
Perez told The Daily Mirror: “As you know it [Chelsea signing Pogba] has to be signed by the end of this week. We are going to move on in the best interests of the club. We were told by Chelsea that [Pogba] was waiting for a final decision. We will see what happens.”