Once upon a time, Angel Di Maria was British football’s record transfer.
The Argentine toppled Fernando Torres from the transfer top spot
when Manchester United bought him for nearly £60 million.
Torres, himself a flop at Chelsea after his £50 million, offered an eerie foreshadowing into
what the future held for Di Maria.
Just ask Torres, Andy Carroll or Philippe Coutinho - breath-taking price tags
are so often followed by unrealistic expectations, broken dreams and a world of disappointment.
But how did Di Maria, a player once hailed as just as important to Real Madrid as Cristiano Ronaldo,
find his dream move to Old Trafford descend into his own personal hell?
Cast your mind back to 2014. Real Madrid had just won La Decima, their historic 10th win in European Cup and Champions League history.
Di Maria’s man-of-the-match performance in that final win over city rivals Atletico Madrid made him the belle of the ball.
The plucky Argentine defied expectations he’d lose his starting spot to 2013 signing Gareth Bale by shifting from the wing to midfield.
But he saw the writing on the Santiago Bernabeu wall in August of that year when World Cup 2014 stars Toni Kroos
and James Rodriguez were signed for a combined total of roughly £100 million.
Di Maria thought ‘why keep fighting for a club that merely like you when you can feel loved elsewhere’.
He rejected contract talks in Madrid and Manchester United saw an opportunity to bag themselves an unsettled player.
When he left it was on positive terms and he said: "The truth is that I have a great relationship with Cristiano Ronaldo
and I stayed at Madrid last season thanks to him. I left Madrid in the best possible way, by winning La Decima…
… I am grateful to Manchester United for meeting Madrid's demands.
But I don't feel any extra pressure because I'm the most expensive player in the Premier League.”
Back then United were flush with money, but not with quality. In a post-Sir Alex Ferguson vacuum,
fresh from ditching mega managerial flop David Moyes, the club identified Di Maria as the “world-class midfielder”
that could propel them back into title contention.
Louis van Gaal was the second manager charged with steering United in this scary, Fergie-less world.
And Di Maria was his marquee signing that first summer. At the beginning all seemed rosy between him and a player who, at the time,
was the sixth-most expensive signing in the history of the sport.
The then-26-year old scored three goals and bagged three assists in his first five games, all of which came when he played on the left flank.
But his form quickly deteriorated and Angel was in for a rude awakening.
He never played more than a couple of matches in the same position in his one and only season at Van Gaal’s United.
He was constantly shifted between right wing and left wing, attacking midfield and right midfield, left midfield and support striker.
Van Gaal never gave Di Maria any degree of stability, which it’s blatantly clear that he craved.
The team collective that Van Gaal wanted from his most expensive player to embrace seemed out of reach.
The positional inconsistency and a coach/player relationship meltdown wasn’t the only factor to Di Maria’s United hell.
His rented home was broken into while he lived in Manchester, with the player and his family actually in the house at the time.
Thieves smashed in Di Maria’s patio doors, before an alarm sounded and the wannabe bandits fled empty-handed.
Nothing was stolen, but the Argentine and his young family were left shaken by the experience.
Di Maria also admitted that he struggled to acclimatise to his new country.
When you’ve spent your life living in warm Spanish-speaking countries, the north of England can be…
a bit of a culture shock. And so faith in Di Maria disappeared.
The fans lost interest in him, Van Gaal turned to others to win him matches,
and Di Maria lost belief in himself. In United’s last 10 league games of the season, he didn’t start once and came off the bench for cameos 7 times.
Di Maria never played for Manchester United again. After a summer of assessing his options,
he didn’t go on their pre-season tour, with Van Gaal claiming he “didn’t know” where his star player was.
Di Maria swiftly secured a £44 million move to nouveau riche Paris Saint-Germain, where he could continue to earn a princely sum and,
he hoped rebuild his broken reputation and self-belief.
It was an expensive lesson for United, who made a loss of £16 million in transfer fees and £14 million in wages.
That's £30 million.
At PSG, Di Maria’s been showered in domestic titles, though another Champions League success has continued to elude the star player of the 2014 final.
Earlier in 2019, ahead of PSG’s Champions League last 16 clash with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s revitalised Manchester United, Di Maria said:
“It was not the best time of my career, or rather I was not allowed to spend my best time there.
"There were complications with the coach at the time. But thank God, I was able to come to PSG and demonstrate again who I was.”
So, was Di Maria hard done by at United?
Hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to get all the best in-depth football analysis – and so much more – direct from Goal.