Angel Di Maria’s year at Manchester United will go down alongside John Terry’s six-game loan spell at Nottingham Forest, Liverpool’s signing of Rickie Lambert and Radamel Falcao’s time at Old Trafford as mere blips in football’s space-time continuum. In hindsight, all four moves will be remembered as ones that probably shouldn’t have happened.
In the illustrious catalogue of players to have worn the famed No. 7 shirt at United, Di Maria was undoubtedly the most disappointing—and that’s even accounting for Michael Owen and Antonio Valencia. It’s not that the jersey weighed too heavily on the most expensive signing in Premier League history, but that it never really fitted him.