Revealed!!!: Why Arsenal and Liverpool want to sign Alexis Sanchez

When Alexis Sanchez was preparing to join  Barcelona in 2011, his Udinese team-mate and close pal Antonio Di Natale told him: ‘Go to the Premier League instead, it will suit your style far more’.
That advice will have come back to the 25-year-old this summer as Barcelona usher him towards the exit to make way for Luis Suarez.
To say Sanchez has failed at the Nou Camp would be wrong: last season only Lionel Messi scored more goals for Barcelona in La Liga and only Diego Costa and Cristiano Ronaldo managed more in the entire division, but he has struggled to fit the Barca mould.
Barcelona is the perfectly tailored suit for some players and a straitjacket for others. ‘I had to learn how to play football again. I couldn’t do what I did in Italy,’ he told El Pais last year.

Pep Guardiola was a fan because he saw in him someone who could play with his back to goal holding the ball up but who also had the pace to be played in behind a rivals’ defence.
But the job demanded sacrifice — no longer could he live up to the Nino Maravilla (Boy Wonder) nickname given to him in Italy as he took Udinese by storm, having arrived from River Plate in 2008, where he won the league under Diego Simeone.
At times he struggled against defences that always sit deep against Barcelona, allowing little space behind. ‘Sometimes I want to take people on but because the opposition is defending so deep I can’t and so I have to just play a pass back into midfield,’ he said.
There was also less scope for him to dominate and go where he saw fit on the pitch, as he did for  Udinese and for the national team. When he said, ‘I work three times as hard for the Chile team as I do for Barcelona’, he wasn’t revealing a lazy side to his game, he was just illustrating how at the club there was far less freedom for him to move around the pitch.
At Liverpool or Arsenal, Brendan Rodgers or Arsene Wenger will be more willing to play to his tune. He will have the lead role that was never possible at Barcelona alongside Messi. Away from the spotlight of one of Europe’s most glamorous club he will also be more comfortable off the pitch. He is famous for being at a publicity shoot in Milan once and failing to notice the club’s chief executive Adriano Galliani at the table of a top city restaurant. The glitz of football’s who’s who tends to pass him by.