Gerard Pique Reveals Why He Leave Manchester United For Barcelona. Spanish and Barcelona defender Gerard Pique has revealed the reason he leave Manchester United to joined Barcelona
Man Utd sold Gerard Pique to Barcelona for €5million in 2008 and the centre-back has since won every trophy available to him.
Pique moved to Old Trafford in 2004 from Barca’s renowned La Masia academy.
But he struggled for regular minutes as Ferdinand and Vidic formed the most dominant centre-back partnership in the Premier League.
Pique eventually returned to Spain in 2008 where he has since won multiple major honours.
And the 28-year-old believes he was “unlucky” to be behind two great defenders.
He told the Telegraph: “When I was there Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Giggs, Scholes, Roy Keane. We won the Champions League in 2008. We won the league. It was a really, really good team.
“The centre-backs, Rio Ferdinand, Vidic. I was really unlucky. They never got injured. Then I left and then they started to get injuries! This is football but I’m not really worried.
“It’s true that I was happy in Manchester even though I didn’t play as much as I wanted to.
“But the day I finally signed for Barcelona and I came back it was ‘wow, the dream comes true’.
“After this we won a lot of titles and other dreams come true but the main one was playing for the club that I had supported all my life.”
Pique said he was ‘coming back to my second home’ after learning of Barcelona’s opponents in the Champions League’s last eight as he looks to win the European Cup for the fourth time in his career. His first two successes came in the 2009 and 2011 finals against United.
We’ve looked at the reasons behind his decision to quit United for a return to the Catalan giants – in Pique’s own words.
“When I was there Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Giggs, Scholes, Roy Keane. We won the Champions League in 2008. We won the league. It was a really, really good team,” the 32-year-old told the Telegraph in 2015.
“Sir Alex was like a second father to me. He made me earn it, but eventually he gave me my chance,” Pique said in a post on the Players’ Tribune.
“In 2007, after two years in England, he told me that I was going to play about 25 games that season. Everything started well. I was getting to play a bit alongside Rio. And then, in November, we went to play in Bolton.
“I can still picture the ball floating in the air.
“It was a set piece. I was supposed to be marking Nicolas Anelka. Bolton chipped the ball into the box, and I thought, I’m going to be aggressive . I jumped up to head the ball away, and I completely missed it. It was like something out of a nightmare. The ball just … kept floating. It was that yellow and purple Premier League ball. Remember that one? It floated right over my head like a balloon.
“I landed and turned around in horror. Anelka controlled the ball and scored easily. We ended up losing 1-0, and it was my fault.”
Barcelona is home
“I wanted to go home. But I knew that I had to have a very difficult conversation with Sir Alex,” Pique added in his Players’ Tribune entry.
“There was no buyout clause in my contract, and United could set whatever price they wanted, so I had to convince him to let me go. ‘It was one of the hardest conversations of my life, because he took such great care of me.
“But I walked into his office, and I was honest with him. I said, ‘Listen, I feel like I’ve lost your trust. Barcelona is my home. I want to go back. I hope you will let me go’.”
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