Arsenal Star Alexis Sanchez Is Bayern Munich’s Number One Summer Target
Arsenal star Alexis Sanchez could be keen to move on after only two years with the North London outfit, according to reports emerging in Sanchez’s native Chile.
Reports suggest that Carlo Ancelotti, who is set to take over the reins from Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich at the end of the current campaign, has already identified Sanchez as his number one priority for the summer. The three-time Champions League winner is reportedly concerned with the recent injury records of Bayern’s current wide-men, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben, and he sees Sanchez as the man capable of assuming the mantle from them, according to a report in the British newspaper The Sun.
Sanchez has built a name for himself in Europe as a relentless technical player who can play anywhere in the front-three, and although his form this season has been ravaged by injury and a prolonged international campaign, his quality means that he is always on the radar of the very best clubs in the world.
Even by what has been considered as a relatively poor season by his standards, Sanchez has scored 13 goals for Arsenal so far with five games still to go, a decent figure for someone who missed a good chunk of the season on account of a hamstring injury.
If the report is accurate, it will come as a huge blow to Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who might already be bracing himself for a tough summer after his team’s dramatic collapse in form during the second half of the season.
A major chunk of Arsenal’s supporters have been extremely vocal about their desire to see Wenger go, and should the Frenchman fail to hold on to Alexis Sanchez during the summer, those noises of disapproval may only attain a sharper note.
Having said that, Arsenal do not face any of the financial restrictions that plagued them over the last decade when the club were still repaying the loan for the Emirates Stadium, and Wenger will hope some shrewd activity in the transfer market will be enough to convince Sanchez not to part ways just yet.
Although Sanchez has publicly stated that he likes life in London and has enjoyed being an Arsenal player, the English press was abuzz in March with snippets of an interview where the Chilean allegedly said that his teammates lacked the “hunger” required to lift titles.
“If we go out on to to the pitch with hunger to become champions, to win the Premier League or the Champions League we can achieve it,” Sanchez had said after Arsenal’s draw with fierce rivals Tottenham Hotspur, who currently sit six points clear of Arsenal in second place in the Premier League table.
“There are great players here, I train with them daily and they have got the mentality and the desire to win, but sometimes we lack the hunger, the mentality that we are winning 1-0 when we go out on to the pitch.
“Sometimes we lack this hunger to believe that we can be champions… [We need] to go out on to the pitch feeling that we are already winning 1-0.”
Construe those statements in whichever way you like, but it appears increasingly likely that Alexis Sanchez’s future may depend on which of the managers — Carlo Ancelotti or Arsene Wenger — wants him more in the summer and beyond.
[Photo by Gary M. Prior/Getty Images]
