Dani Alves was all set to join Manchester City in the summer of 2017. He was excited about linking up again with Pep Guardiola, with whom he had conquered the world at Barcelona, and had even just had lunch with the Catalan coach to begin planning for the coming season at the Etihad Stadium.
The Brazilian had also convinced Juventus to end his contract early so that the reunion could happen. Everything was set up. But then, to City’s shock and Guardiola’s fury, Alves pulled out of the move and signed for Paris Saint-Germain instead.
The reason? Alves’ then wife, Joana Sanz, did not want to live in Manchester. For some reason, the Spanish model, who Alves had just married on the tiny, picturesque island of Formentera days before making the U-turn, preferred the City of Love over the home of Oasis and The Smiths.
Even though Manchester has undergone a huge transformation in recent years and is rivalling New York for tall buildings, it still lags behind Madrid, Barcelona, Milan and Paris when it comes to attractive locations for footballers to live in.
And Sanz, who split with Alves this year after he was provisionally jailed and charged with alleged sexual assault, is far from the only partner of a footballer who has not warmed to the city.
Angel Di Maria, Carlos Tevez and Nolito have been the most vocal in their criticism of Manchester while a desire for a change of scenery and a move to warmer climes is believed to be the main reason why Ilkay Gundogan has left Man City for Barcelona. It is also a big factor in Bernardo Silva departing City this summer.
With the transfer window in full swing and many changes on the horizon for both Manchester clubs, GOAL takes a look at why some foreign players did not enjoy living in the city and highlights the notable few ones who fondly remember their time there.
Avoiding a club because of the city ‘an error’A source who helps footballers settle into new clubs told GOAL that City and United’s statuses as among the biggest and most successful teams in the world means the attraction of playing for them overrides any concerns players may have about living in Manchester.
“There’s no player I can think of who wouldn’t want to go to City or United, they are such big clubs that they are above these concerns, the club weighs more than the city,” he says.
“I wouldn’t say that at any moment in the prime of your career you’d be swayed by a city. Those two clubs are among the top five in the world, to not go there due to the city itself would be an error.
“All the players want to go to England, it’s the best league in the world for a reason. I don’t think it’s a deciding factor, a city can be better or worse, and players mostly stay in their homes as their day-to-day activity is pretty basic and they mostly focus on playing football.
“If you ask Haaland or Grealish they’ll be delighted, they’ve just won the treble. I don’t think the city is too much of a factor for young players.”
FC Barcelona‘You cannot compare Manchester with Barcelona’
But to the likes of Alves and Di Maria who were already global stars and Champions League winners, off-the-pitch factors matter more. The same is true for Gundogan, who has spent seven years at City and after captaining them to win the treble, has achieved everything possible with the club.
“It depends on the stage of your career. If you’re young and starting out no-one would say no to going there for that reason,” adds the source. “But Gundogan has won everything, so he wants a new challenge and he’s been in Manchester for seven years, so why would he stay somewhere with grey skies and, for example, where he can’t get good sushi?
“The city of course helps to convince the player and you cannot compare Manchester with somewhere like Barcelona, where you have perfect food, it’s sunny all day and you have the beach. Anyone in the world would want to live there. Where do people go on holiday? To Barcelona. There’s no city in the UK that can offer you as much.
“I don’t think Manchester is an ugly city but on a gastronomic level it leaves a bit to be desired. It has improved but it’s not Paris, Barcelona or even London, which is the New York of Europe.”
- Improving cuisine, despite the complaints
A lack of good food in Manchester is a common complaint among the partners of players. Di Maria’s wife described the local food as “disgusting” while David de Gea’s girlfriend Edurne Garcia, who opted against living full time in Manchester when the goalkeeper moved to United in 2011, said you had to seek out the best eateries, and even then they were not as good as the offerings in Spain.
Gundogan’s wife Sara Arfaoui made headlines last year by complaining about a shortage of quality restaurants. “I tried so bad to find a good restaurant but horrible food everywhere,” she said. “Maybe in London but in Manchester nothing. I’m sorry.”
But Manchester’s culinary reputation has been growing steadily, leading it to be named by Lonely Planet as the number one city to visit in the UK in 2023. Two years ago, it was chosen by Time Out as the third best city in the world, only trailing San Francisco and Amsterdam.
Guardiola helped launch TAST, a high-end Catalan eatery in the city centre, and there are a number of other top-quality Spanish restaurants dotted around town. Guardiola likes to indulge in Japanese restaurant Musu, while Erling Haaland likes to go to Indian street food spot Dishoom and Italian restaurant San Carlo, in addition to grilling his own steaks during City’s Premier League title party.
Chinese restaurant Wings has long been popular with players and managers and was the favourite haunt of Louis van Gaal during his two years as United manager. Another popular eatery is Zouk Tea Bar and Grill, where United players are often seen and where pop stars Rihanna and Drake have dined.
- Nolito and the lack of sunshine
Manchester’s grey skies and heavy rainfall are the butt of many jokes. However, it only ranks as the 16th wettest city in Europe. Milan, Munich and Lyon all have more rainfall, even though weather is rarely mentioned as a reason why players would not join AC Milan, Inter, Lyon or Bayern Munich.
Former City winger Nolito made headlines by declaring that the lack of sunshine in Manchester had made his daughter’s skin change colour and that she looked like she had been “living in a cave”. A doctor even advised him to give her vitamin D tablets.
Nolito had joined City from Celta Vigo, the wettest city in Spain and which receives 5.8mm average daily rainfall compared to 3.2 in Manchester, so he should have been able to cope with the rain. But he struggled to deal with the short days in the winter.
He told The Guardian: “We’d have lunch together, dinner at home, go down and have a coffee, but it didn’t quite work. If it gets dark at 5pm then at six it’s like it’s 10 o’clock and you even start to get tired. You think: ‘Bloody hell, it’s only six!’”
- Aguero’s lonely existence
Nolito did not exactly adapt well to life in Manchester although he only had one year to acclimatise before returning to Spain to join Sevilla. Sergio Aguero, meanwhile, spent a decade with City, becoming the club’s all-time top scorer with 275 goals, most crucially the strike that landed them their first ever Premier League title in 2012.
And for a player so cherished by City fans, he did not seem to integrate much into the local culture. In the All or Nothing documentary released in 2018 he said he had a lonely existence, spending most of his free time by himself, except when his son and siblings were visiting.
He also spoke next to no English and during the Champions League final coverage on BT Sport he resorted to speaking in Spanish, with Cesc Fabregas having to act as his translator.
- Tevez: ‘Manchester has nothing’
But at least he never complained about life in Manchester, unlike his compatriot Carlos Tevez. Tevez infamously swapped United for City in 2009, falling out with the club during the 2011/12 season when he refused to warm up and come off the substitutes bench in a Champions League clash with Bayern Munich. This wasn’t the only incident that attracted the ire of supporters either.
In 2011, by which time he had lived in Manchester for four years, he said the city had “nothing” and admitted he had made no new friends since moving. “I’m never going back, not even on holiday, not for anything,” he added.
Earlier this year, Tevez admitted he had refused to learn a word of English in a bizarre protest due to the Falklands War. He said: “The seven years I spent in England were: ‘Okay, I’m here for work but I’m not getting used to English culture’. You want to speak to me. Then you learn Spanish, because I’m not going to learn English.”
- ‘All of it was horrible’
Argentines in particular seem to find it difficult to enjoy living in Manchester. None more so than Di Maria, who became United’s record signing in 2014 for £60 million ($76.2m) but left one year later for PSG, having fallen out with Van Gaal and angering Red Devils’ fans due to his lack of commitment.
His family suffered a traumatic experience when their house was burgled while they were in it. But his wife Jorgelina Cardoso later admitted she hated the city even before they began living in it.
“I didn’t want to go to Manchester because at that moment in time, I was friends with Gianinna Maradona, who was married to [Sergio] Aguero, and we flew from Madrid to his house in Manchester to pay him a visit for two or three days when Angel had a few days off at Real Madrid,” she said.
“It was horrible! All of it was horrible, we went to the house and we were like… ‘See you later guys, we’re out of here’. When we left, I said to him, ‘Go to any country – except England’. Anyway, one year later and there we were in England and it was horrible, a sh**hole.”
Cardoso also said she was afraid of the “weird” people in the city. She added: “You’re walking down the street and you don’t know if they’re going to kill you or what. All the girls are all dolled up, perfectly made-up and there’s me with my hair in a bun and with no make-up on.”
Mata embraces the art scene
A handful of foreign players have loved living in the city. The best example is Juan Mata, who joined United in 2014 after leaving Chelsea.
Mata had started a blog while in London in which he would write about his experiences in the capital and when he moved to Manchester he waxed lyrical about the city’s cultural offerings. He wrote enthusiastic reviews of his time in the Northern Quarter and its record shops and was a frequent visitor to the Whitworth Art Gallery.
And since leaving the club in 2022 for Galatasaray he has maintained his ties with the city. Last week he returned to Manchester to inaugurate an art exhibition called The Trequartista: Art and Football United, presenting a collaborative piece of performance art with German artist Tino Sehgal.
“Manchester was my home and I have a lot of people I know (there) and I’m sure they are happy when I go back and I look forward to going back to visit many friends. It’s a great city,” Mata told the Manchester Evening News.
- Kompany ‘understands the place’
Mata was following in the footsteps of another Manchester United great in hosting an art exhibition in the city. Eric Cantona, who helped put the city on the global map again in the 1990s, held a six-month exhibition at the Football Museum with local artist Michael Browne and has often spoken about his love for the city’s history of political activism and rebellion.
Another foreign-born champion of Manchester is Vincent Kompany. The former City captain has done lots of campaigning against homelessness in the city, launching his charity Tackle4MCR to raise money and awareness for the cause.
He was praised by Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who said Kompany’s interest in the problem of homelessness, a growing problem in the city “speaks powerfully about the effect Manchester has had on him – how he understands the place, his emotional intelligence”. The Belgian is also married to a Mancunian, Carla Higg, a lifelong City fan.
Courtesy Goal.Com
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