By DailyMailSport for Lolwe digital
Angel Di Maria’s time in the Premier League was short lived, and it may not just have been to do with his form at Manchester United, as his wife has revealed the awful time she had in England.
Speaking to Spanish morning show Los Angeles de la Manana, Jorgelina Cardoso spoke about all the things she hated in Manchester following his ill-fated £59.7million move from Real Madrid in 2014.
‘I begged Angel, any place but England,’ she said. ‘And one year later we were in Manchester, s***.’
When asked about what exactly was wrong with Manchester, she didn’t have much nice to say about the city.
‘I didn’t like anything at all. The people were all skinny, neat, weird. You are walking and you don’t know if they are going to kill you or not.’
Di Maria’s house was targeted in an attempted robbery in 2015, where burglars are believed to have used scaffolding poles to smash their way into their house.
After this, the family stayed briefly in the Lowry Hotel, and the house was eventually put up for sale when Cardoso was scared to return home.
‘The food is disgusting,’ she continued. ‘The girls all use a lot of make up, like they are dolls.’
Di Maria moved to PSG after just a year at Old Trafford, and has been there since 2015.
He scored just four goals in 32 games during his season at Manchester United. By comparison, he now has 80 goals in 217 games for the French champions.
Although he is much happier in Paris, his wife is eventually targeting a move back to their home country of Argentina.
Di Maria, 32, himself has hit out at United multiple times since he left, proving that he too still harbours bitter feelings over his short spell there.
In fact, Di Maria cannot stand the sight of United. So much so that he has to change the channel if they are ever on television, according to his PSG team-mate Marcin Bulka.
‘Di Maria hates Manchester United,’ Bulka told Polish YouTube channel Foot Truck. ‘He has no good memory of the time he spent there.
‘In fact, when something related to Manchester United appears on television, he changes the channel quickly.’
The Argentina winger spent just one season at United before leaving for PSG in a £44.3m deal in August 2015. During his time in the French capital to date, he has won nine major honours – including three Ligue 1 titles. He won nothing with United.
Di Maria’s return to Old Trafford with PSG in the Champions League in February 2019 highlighted the animosity.
He was bundled into the advertising hoardings by his former team-mate Ashley Young, much to the delight of the unsympathetic home crowd.
Di Maria received a constant barrage of abuse, although he went on to set up both goals in a 2-0 win for his side.
Videos also appeared to show Di Maria telling United fans to ‘f*** off’ after setting up Presnel Kimpembe to score the opening goal.
A bottle of beer was even launched at Di Maria as he took a corner.
In response, Di Maria taunted the crowd by picking up the bottle before pretending to drink it – an action that UEFA came close to punishing him for.
In February he complained about the club forcing him to wear their iconic No 7 shirt, previously worn by club legends such as George Best, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo.
He wanted the No 11 shirt – the number he now wears with current club Paris Saint-Germain, but Adnan Januzaj was in possession of it at the time, meaning Di Maria was pressured into taking the No 7 – he claims.
‘I don’t really know. When I arrived, I saw that the No 11 was available,’ he told Ligue 1 when asked why he took that shirt with the French giants.
‘It’s a shirt number I wore a lot when I was younger and I was keen to get once again.
‘At Real Madrid, No 11 was already taken, so I took 22. At Manchester United they gave me No 7, I didn’t get a choice. I would have liked 11 but there we are. Here, I had a choice, so I chose 11!’
Di Maria has also revealed he never wanted to join United in the first place.
He admitted a few months after quitting United that he had set his heart on staying at Real Madrid after the Champions League final in 2014, in which he was man of the match, and that when it was clear he had to leave his preference was for Paris Saint-Germain.
He told Spanish newspaper Marca: ‘My intention was always to stay [at Madrid]. I don’t really know what happened on the inside [of the deal] these are things that representatives deal with. It happens in football.’
Asked why his move to United turned into a nightmare, he said: ‘I started very well but then I had problems with people at the club, I started being left on the bench, then my home was robbed. It all just made me want to get out of there as quickly as possible.’
And hinting at PSG’s financial fair play issues being at the heart of why he went to Old Trafford and not Paris, he added: ‘My move to PSG could have happened before this summer but it didn’t for financial reasons and I ended up going to United. In the summer I had the chance to go there again and I could not say no.’
Louis van Gaal brought Di Maria to United in one of the most expensive ever Premier League transfers, and he got off to a flying start, winning their player of the month award that September.
But his form tailed off soon after as he began to suffer from injury and with adapting to life in England. He was also viewed as a defensive liability by Van Gaal and is now remembered as one of the biggest flops in British football history.
