'I played for Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola – Jose made me lose my joy'

Alexis Sanchez is one of 14 players who have enjoyed the distinction of playing under both Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho and there’s no doubting which spell he preferred. The Chilean attacker only spent one season under the Spaniard in 2011/12 before Guardiola left his role, with the forward lasting two more years at the Nou Camp ahead of signing for Arsenal.

His time with the ‘Special One’ came later, after Sanchez controversially moved from the Gunners to Manchester United in January 2018.

But by the conclusion of the 2019/20 campaign both player and manager were gone, with Mourinho having been sacked and Sanchez headed out to Inter Milan on loan, a deal which would later become permanent.

In his sole campaign with Guardiola, Sanchez played a prominent role, making 41 appearances and scoring 15 times. And while the Catalan giants failed to retain the Champions League or win the La Liga title, he was able to help himself to Spanish Super Cup, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA World Club Cup and Copa del Rey medals.

Under Tito Vilanova and then Gerardo Martino, Sanchez would also go on to win a La Liga title and another Spanish Super Cup with the club. But speaking in 2017, he outlined how it was the now Manchester City coach who had made him change his outlook on the game.

“I have worked to be the best in the world since the age of 15,” he said. “I have always thought about that. But in recent years and under Guardiola, I have learned to not be selfish with my team-mates.”

His time under Mourinho was not so fruitful, however. After three-and-a-half-years at Arsenal, which yielded 80 goals in 166 games and two FA Cup wins, Sanchez arrived at Old Trafford one of the hottest properties in England’s top flight, with the Portuguese coach famously boasting he’d signed “the juiciest orange on the tree.”

And yet, Sanchez looked a shadow of the player who had lit up the Emirates, managing just three goals in 30 games before Mourinho departed late in 2019. Things scarcely got better thereafter, with the player moving to Italy having eventually struck five teams in 45 appearances.

Speaking to the BBC in 2020, the man considered one of Chile’s greatest-ever footballers praised the methods of his former coach, but was scathing about the environment in Manchester. “Mourinho is one of the best coaches in the world in the way that he coaches, how he studies videos, the way he goes about things,” he said.

“But then, within the group there was that feeling that you were in the team then out. Sometimes I didn’t play, then I did, then I didn’t and as a player you lose confidence, each player lost their confidence.

“And then an atmosphere was created that wasn’t healthy. Sometimes I’m playing well and I score a goal and he took me off. And I’d say, ‘I love football, I love football.’ I’ve played football since I was five and if I have the ball taken away from me, it’s as if I lose my joy. I’m like that.”