Alejandro Garnacho says the end of his Manchester United career hurt, but he insists he has no bitterness toward the club after his £40million move to Chelsea in the summer. The 21-year-old winger said the final months before he left were marked by frustration, bench appearances and mistakes he believes were partly his own.
“Nothing really went wrong. Sometimes different moments in life… I remember it was the last six months I was just starting to not really be playing like before for Manchester United, [when I had previously been] playing everything, every minute,” Garnacho said. “I have to play every game,” he added, before admitting, “I started to do some — maybe on me also — bad things.”
That spell unfolded across a difficult run at Old Trafford. Ruben Amorim dropped Garnacho for the Manchester derby in December. He stayed at United in January despite an approach from Napoli, then reacted angrily after being substituted against Ipswich Town in February, with Amorim later revealing the player paid for a team dinner as an apology. Before his move to Chelsea, Garnacho trained away from United’s first team in pre-season alongside Marcus Rashford, Antony, Tyrell Malacia and Jadon Sancho.
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Even so, Garnacho drew a clear line between his frustration and his feelings about the club that brought him through from Spain at Getafe to the academy and then the first team. “But with United, I have nothing wrong to say about the club, no one in the club, any teammates,” he said. “Yeah, maybe yes, because I loved that club, you know? They gave me the confidence from the start, from Spain (Getafe), to bring me to the academy, then they bring me to the first team, so it was like four or five years, and amazing love from everyone, from the fans, the stadium, everything was really good.”
He said the exit was painful because of what the club meant to him, but he also framed the move as a necessary break. “It’s just sometimes you have to change for the good of your life or the next steps. I have nothing bad to say about them, the time we spent together was really good, I only have good memories of Man Utd,” he said. Garnacho had already said in December that he had no regrets about the way he left, and his latest comments suggest the split was less a break-up than a long, unhappy drift toward the same end.
What follows is the measure of whether Chelsea get the best version of him. Garnacho has made 37 appearances in all competitions this season, scoring eight goals and providing four assists, a return that shows end product even as his old club still hangs over the story.
