El Niño Maravilla - Alexis Sanchez analysis
For a long time Arsenal fans have been hoping that a South American forward will arrive at the Emirates bringing technical brilliance, directness in attacks and most importantly, effective contribution in attack. Finally the fans’ wish came true. Since the season came to end, everyone around Arsenal was well informed that this summer will be a big one, both off and on the pitch.
Every fan and every Arsenal employee knew that without adding a pacey forward with more directness we would be undoing the good work of the last two years. Our current style and system is based on players who drive the team forward and give options to the midfielders and the number 10 out wide. For more than six months we’ve been without Walcott and we badly missed a player of his caliber, so we needed to assess that position quickly and we did exactly that. Early in the transfer market we bought a player, Alexis Sanchez, who will add everything we’ve been missing, a player who’ll massively improve our squad, options and forward line. Wenger pulled a masterstroke and brought a world beater in Alexis. Now, adding the Chilean to Walcott and Chamberlain, we have three pacey players who we can rely on to run at defenders, to cut inside from behind and offer the box-to-box midfielder and the number 10 more options when bursting in attack. With just one huge signing we’ve improved and massively added depth in the attacking line and however you see it, we can rotate as much as we want and still have a very strong but healthy and fit forward line.
Basic info and short Career review:
Alexis Alejandro Sanchez Sanchez.
Born on the 19th of December, 1988 in Tocopilla, Chile.
Height: 1,69 (5ft 7’).
Weight: 62kg
Alexis Sanchez spent his youth career and first professional year as a football player at Chilean football club, Cobreloa, before attracting serious interest from Italian club, Udinese. The Italian club bought the promising Chilean player for 1.7 million pounds and started a maturation project that included two loans in order for him to gather more experience and mature faster. The Italian club first loaned Alexis to Colo Colo and then a year after, to River Plate. After a period where he had to go on two separate loans, the period Udinese wanted to use so Sanchez could mature faster, the Chilean returned to Italy and started his Udinese career. He spent two years playing for the Italian club where he was one of the brightest spots of that team, alongside Di Natale and Isla, a really incredible player and at that time, one of the most highly rated talents and honestly, he still is one of the most unique football talents in the world for me. In 2011, Barcelona agreed a deal with Udinese for the transfer of Alexis Sanchez, the Catalan based team spent around 25 million pounds plus 9 million in additional bonuses for the player and three years later, we all know what happened, Wenger pulled a masterstroke deal and brought him to the Emirates in a 30-35 million pounds deal on a 4 + 1 year long contract, worth 130,000 per week or 6.7 million per year. Moving onto the real stuff.
