Man City flop admits he wasn’t worth his huge transfer fee in refreshingly honest interview
Manchester City have got plenty right in the transfer market over the years and explains why they have had the success they have had.
However, no club gets every decision right when it brings in players and some calls just simply do not end up paying off.
One decision City made back in 2014 which falls into that category is when they brought in defender Eliaquim Mangala from FC Porto, when Manuel Pellegrini was in charge at the Etihad Stadium.
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Mangala did end up with a Premier League winners’ medal which he claimed for the 2017/18 campaign, which happened to be Pep Guardiola’s first time as champion of the English top flight.
In his first couple of seasons at City under Pellegrini, Mangala featured a fair amount, making 31 appearances in his first campaign and 33 in his second.
However, when Pellegrini departed City in the summer of 2016 and Guardiola arrived in Manchester, Mangala was deemed surplus to requirements and he spent the 2016/17 campaign on loan at Valencia in La Liga.
Back at City the following campaign, Mangala turned out 15 times in the first half of the season, but spent the second portion on loan at Everton.
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In the end, Mangala departed City in the summer of 2019 when his five-year contract expired and was overall a flop in the top flight.
Since departing City, the former French international has played for Valencia once more and Saint-Etienne in his native France, and is currently at Portuguese side Estoril.
Now aged 33, Mangala has reflected on his time at City and especially the transfer fee which the Blues parted with to bring the defender to Manchester.
All in, the deal was worth more than €50m – which at the time made him the most expensive defender in the world – and in a refreshingly honest interview, Mangala has admitted no player is worth that amount.
Speaking to French outlet Le10 Sport, Mangala said: “When I was told at the time that it was over €50m, and €50m was a lot of money… But no man is worth €50m!
“When you’re part of an industry, a business, you inevitably enter into a logic that goes beyond normal life, but nobody is worth this or that price. It doesn’t make sense.
“But it was a real experience to go through that. I really enjoyed it. I said, you’ll see in one or two years, this record will be broken, and it was.”
City defender Josko Gvardiol now holds the record for the world’s most expensive defender after moving from RB Leipzig for €90m, having taken it from Manchester United’s Harry Maguire, who cost the red half of the city €87m when he switched from Leicester City in 2019.