Alexis Sanchez has been spotted wearing the new Arsenal kit while playing in a local football match with friends back home in Chile.
Sanchez, who left the Gunners to join Manchester United in January 2018, was invited to the home of Chile team-mate Mauricio Isla for a small-sided game and chose to wear their new retro-inspired 2024/25 home shirt. The 35-year-old reposted an Instagram story originally uploaded by Isla showing the teams.
Clearly, Sanchez does still hold clear feelings towards Arsenal despite leaving the club under a cloud. Sanchez moved to the Gunners from Barcelona for £31.7million in July 2014 and enjoyed a successful three-and-a-half years at the Emirates, almost helping the club win the Premier League. During his time in north London, Sanchez scored 80 goals and added 43 assists in 166 appearances.
It’s safe to say Sanchez struggled to adapt to life at United and scored just five goals in 45 matches before leaving to join Inter Milan on loan ahead of the 2019/20 season. The Chilean even admitted that he wanted to return to Arsenal after just ONE training session at United.
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Back in September 2020, he said: “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. 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.”
Sanchez spent last season at Inter and scored just four goals in 33 matches. That followed an impressive campaign at Marseille, where he had notched 18 times in 44 appearances.
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