Alexis Sanchez shows a preview of his best Manchester United pre-season match with San Jose Earthquakes

After a lively start, where Sanchez had set up Eric Bailly to open the scoring with a delightful free kick – only for his teammate United to hit the crossbar of a mere header – there was a moment in the game, a brief The passage of the game, which shows us everything United wants as Chilean.

An attack from San Jose broke down and Sanchez left, keeping the ball in play with a toe, before leaving as a sprinter, running down the sidelines,

The crowd shouted their encouragement, Sanchez made 30 meters and stopped, slowing down to allow Florian Jungwirth's blanket to approach him, before taking off again.

Jungwirth He knew that he had been beaten and stretched out an arm, sending Sanchez to crash on the floor with a "clothing line" motion that would not have seemed out of place in a wrestling match. The yellow card was rightly shown, Anthony Martial being fast enough to follow him, United was almost on goal.

It was more like that. Sanchez was full of purpose, direct and strong, a dynamic a beam of energy, with an eye for a pass, the ability to beat his man and with it, the potential to launch United on the raids of attack at the speed needed to break the

It was the first few days and it was against a weak opposition, a San Jose Earthquakes team that had won just two games in five months, but that was encouraging.

Why had Sanchez struggled so badly? at United following a January move from Arsenal remains unclear, but it is the past and at this time of the year, while the attention turns to hope of a new campaign, it is the future that counts now. If United will be fighting for the title next season, they need the real Sanchez to win.

It says a lot about Sanchez's disappointing start at Old Trafford that the most memorable thing about his first six months at the club was the video made to announce his signature on social media in January

A great production class that whets appetite for what was coming, fueling the sense of excitement aroused by what it would bring to a team that, at this point, was still in the title race, the Champions League and the FA Cup. The possibilities seemed endless, only for the man himself to disappoint and the United campaign to disappear into a trophy-free.

A little hard, perhaps, but the Sanchez who played for Arsenal has not yet been seen in Manchester. It can not continue.

For all attempts at attenuation, Sanchez's form was disturbing. When you earn £ 350,000 a week and your signature is considered a major win for Manchester City players, you can not score three goals in 18 largely uninspiring performances.

The need to turn Sanchez into a player At the top of Manchester's list of goals, Mourinho was so sad when it seemed that the Chilean would not be allowed to enter the United States because of a conviction for fraud tax, but only for United to succeed in appealing.

defend him, arguing that we would only start to see the best of him once he had spent a full pre-season with his new teammates, but that seemed like a rather fragile excuse

The The theory being that even at the age of 29 and despite having an immediate impact on Arsenal after moving from Barcelona four years ago, Sanchez needed time to settle down;

But it is for this reason that he was pushed into the starting formation facing San Jose, just 48 hours after landing on the US West Coast. There is no time to lose.

Sanchez seems excited by the challenge, smiling and laughing at the training, chatting happily with his teammates in warming up and cajoling them before the kickoff. He was charged with positive energy and was the heart of all that United was going to do well.

There were no goals, no audience, the real motto of any striker, but as a general performance, you could not ask much of Sanchez in his first run of the day. ;summer.

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