Alexis Sanchez Transfer Saga – the Winners and Losers of the Deal

The Chilean maestro has been highly covered by online sportsbook news lately, with first Manchester City expressing their interest in acquiring his services from Arsenal, only to be trumped by a larger offer by their cross-town rivals Manchester United. Now the transfer saga seems to be coming to a close finally, as Sanchez has been pictured in a van arriving to the famous Carrington – Man United’s training ground and medical center, where the player is expected to sign a record-breaking deal.

The losers of this transfer

Arsenal are definitely on the losing side, as they’ll receive merely £20m for the player as his contract was set to expire in the summer, otherwise Sanchez would have been worth easily 3-4 times what Man United are paying for him. Besides the £20m transfer fee, they’re also moral losers as fans will see this move as just the latest strike in a long list of things that has been going badly for them recently. The Emirates side are reportedly looking to replace his with Dortmund’s Aubameyang but that deal is yet to materialize.

Man City, who have been the frontrunners for the Chilean’s signature, have not only lost the player to another Premier League title rival, but to bitter rivals who are second on the table behind them. More importantly, it is their boss Pep Guardiola who could be hurting the most with Sanchez deciding not to reunite with his former manager who brought him to Barcelona and instead opt to get maybe £50,000 - £100,000 more with Jose Mourinho’s side than he would have at Man City.

But at this stage it remains to be seen how it will work out for the powerful forward at Man United, especially since he will have a great deal of competition in the form of Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard, Juan Mata, Marcus Rashford and others vying for his position on the pitch.

The winners of this transfer

Requesting a move from the Emirates Stadium to Old Trafford, Sanchez is one of the obvious winners especially since he’s about to sign a four-and-a-half year pay package rumoured to be around £400,000 - £500,000 per week.

According to Daily Mail, the Chilean forward is set to net £350,000 per week, plus another £100,000 for image rights that the club can use on their merchandise. On top of that, Man United will pay him a singing-on bonus worth a cool £7.5m, and he’ll receive that every year of this contract with the Red Devils. Sanchez’s agent will pocket £15m as commission for facilitating the deal, per online sportsbooks in Chile.

But perhaps the biggest winner of this transfer saga is Jose Mourinho – a man that has a long track record of playing psychological games with his opponents, and more importantly his biggest Premier League opponent currently is none other than Man City and the man that’s guiding them, Pep Guardiola. This deal can easily be viewed as a major transfer coup for the Portuguese tactician, as not only has he acquired a world-class forward that can deliver him above 20 goals per season, but he has essentially prevented a reunion that could have been detrimental to his team’s success.