Alexis Sanchez’s long-anticipated move to Manchester City never really made complete sense. When they were together at Barcelona, the Chilean and Pep Guardiola seemed to view the way football should be played through very different prisms. Sanchez was a cog in Guardiola’s much bigger, Messi-focused machine at Camp Nou, but since being unshackled in the Premier League has underlined his status as one of the most explosive and destructive players in European football. Guardiola would later admit that he misused Sanchez at Barca, and his more recent desire for a reunion owes much to Sanchez’s tweaked role at Arsenal. ‘I think the position Arsenal are using him as a striker, in front, it is perfect for him,’ said the Catalan last summer. ‘In Barcelona maybe I didn’t help him too much because he played wide. He can do that but he is better between the lines, closer to the goal.’
But it would be naïve to think that simply treating Sanchez as a forward, rather than a winger, would have suddenly made player and manager a perfect fit. Guardiola’s brilliant football is built around structures and patterns of play drilled into the players. Some Bayern Munich players felt they had been turned into robots by Guardiola’s attachment to his philosophy, while Franck Ribery was very vocal about the new sense of freedom he received when Carlo Ancelotti took over. The same was true of Sanchez at Barca, where he was a slave to the system and frequently left on the bench in favour of Pedro, particularly in the biggest matches. ‘Alexis needs freedom and in Barcelona he had to cover a certain area that was not best for his personal game,’ his old Chile boss Jorge Sampaoli explained several years ago. ‘He had to be part of a philosophy that wasn’t convenient for him.’
Even if Guardiola had used him more centrally at City, the sense that Sanchez is a lone wolf that cannot be caged would have remained. At Arsenal, while he is the club’s most important player, he often feels separate from the rest of his teammates: he presses relentlessly, but on his own terms; he routinely goes for the glory shot when an easy pass is on; and he gives away possession more often than any other player on the pitch. That last point feels particularly pertinent at City, where control of the ball is so important. They have averaged the most possession and highest passing accuracy of any team in the division – in fact, across Europe’s top five leagues, only PSG rank better. But Sanchez, instinctively and inherently, plays a more boom-or-bust style. Only one player, Watford’s Jose Holebas, has lost the ball more regularly this season. Kevin De Bruyne comes close, but he’s an outlier for City as a whole (losing possession 501 times to next-worst Kyle Walker’s 291).
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