The fee shattered the previous record of £50 million, set by Chelsea’s purchase of Fernando Torres from Liverpool in 2011, and formed part of a £130 million summer spending spree as United looked to bounce back from a seventh-placed finish, their worst season in a generation.
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Di María arrived fresh off winning the Champions League with Real Madrid, where he was named man of the match in the final against Atlético Madrid, and had also been one of Argentina’s standout performers at that summer’s World Cup before a thigh injury forced him out of the semi-final and final.
“I am absolutely delighted to be joining Manchester United,” Di María said at the time. “United is the only club that I would have left Real Madrid for.”
On the very day Di María arrived at Old Trafford, Man United suffered one of the most embarrassing results in the club’s history, thrashed 4-0 by third-tier MK Dons in the League Cup.
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Di María’s spell in Manchester ultimately proved brief and difficult, managing just 4 goals in 32 appearances across all competitions, with his campaign complicated by an attempted break-in at his Cheshire home in February 2015 and a red card against Arsenal in the FA Cup that cost him his place in the side.
He left for Paris Saint-Germain a year later, and years afterward, reflecting on the move, he described his time at United as “a negative spiral,” crediting his subsequent seven seasons in Paris with helping him “start to feel again like I felt in Madrid.”
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The deal remains a significant marker in the Premier League’s escalating transfer economy of the 2010s, even if it never quite worked out on the pitch for either player or club.
Photo: Chris Brunskill/Getty Images
