Nani's Manchester United Exit a Reminder Talent Is Only Half the Equation

When Manchester United were considering signing Luis Nani from Sporting Lisbon back in 2007, there was one final thing assistant manager Carlos Queiroz wanted to know about the winger—and it had nothing to do with the 20-year-old’s attributes on the pitch.

“He didn't want to know if he had good feet. He knew all about that,” Aurelio Pereira, Sporting’s veteran head of scouting, recalled a few years later to the Daily Mail. “He wanted to know about his personality, how he could cope with a different country and a different team.

“He wanted to know about Nani's mentality and if he could handle the pressure of playing for United.”

Pereira assured his compatriot he had nothing to worry about—“I calmed him and said that, yes, he was buying a complete player”—and the deal was duly done.

Eight years on, however, and with Nani set to depart the club for the final time after a hit-and-miss career at Old Trafford, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that perhaps Queiroz was right to be suspicious all along.

When Nani, along with Porto midfielder Anderson, were announced as United signings in deals worth a combined £30 million in that summer of 2007, the news was greeted with almost unilateral excitement. United had already begun to reap huge rewards from their prior purchase of another starlet of Portuguese football, Cristiano Ronaldo, and the assumption from many was that Sir Alex Ferguson and his European scouting network had spotted another two stars in the making.

Anderson, just 19, was the combative central midfielder set to become a long-term successor to Roy Keane in the middle of the park, while Nani was another attacker with the skill set of Ronaldo, who, perhaps, could one day be his equal.

It never quite worked out like that for either player, although both had their moments (Anderson left the club earlier in 2015, United willing to let him walk away even before his contract expired). Unlike Ronaldo, who started his career at Old Trafford an unpredictable, often selfish winger who slowly but steadily evolved into one of the most versatile and deadly attackers around, Nani never quite managed to find the same path of gradual, consistent improvement in his own game.

In his first season at the club, he exhibited flashes of genius amid game after game of wastefulness and indecision, something initially (and not unreasonably) put down to a lack of maturity and unfamiliarity with the Premier League. Unfortunately, it was a pattern he was never able to fully extricate himself from, even as both those factors diminished.

"Nani's got the potential to do what he wants,” defender Rio Ferdinand noted in 2010, per Goal, after a third United season in which he finally seemed to find some consistency toward the end. “He's one of the sharpest players around, has a great strike with both feet—he's got the potential to be a top, top player."

There were moments—and some truly brilliant goals—before and after that, but the raw skills he clearly had never quite merged to form the all-round superstar that Ronaldo had become by the time he left for Real Madrid. Nani had his compatriot’s same combination of speed, agility, comfort on either foot and eye for goal, yet he could never bring the whole package together for more than a few games at a time.

In 2012, five years after arriving at Old Trafford, Ferguson was still berating Nani’s lack of maturity—on one occasion blaming him explicitly for a Capital One Cup defeat against Chelsea. In the year that followed, Nani was rarely more than a role player; yet, after a brief run of good games that culminated in a starring display against Reading, Ferguson was suddenly lauding Nani’s abilities again.

“I would prefer to keep him to the end of his contract,” the Scot said, per Ian Herbert in the Independent. “But I think he wants guaranteed first-team football. But he can guarantee that. His performance the other night can guarantee that. We're trying our best because he's such a match-winning player."

Ferguson's successor, David Moyes, would eventually persuade him to sign an extension, which now looks like a mistake. After injury and lack of form prevented Nani from impressing Moyes during the 2013-14 season, Nani was loaned back to Sporting Lisbon for the most recent campaign (in a deal that was something of a financial burden for United).

Now not considered a part of Louis van Gaal’s vision for United’s future, he is soon to be off to Fenerbahce on a cut-price permanent deal, according to BBC Sport, leaving with three seasons still left on that extension United hoped might yet be the (belated) making of him.

Ferguson clearly could never quite let go of what Nani could have been, a frustrated desire that perhaps only hampered the player further. When another failed signing, Bebe, was asked by Portuguese magazine Mais (h/t Daily Mail) about Ferguson’s tendency to shout at his players on the training pitch, the midfielder made a telling comment: “With Nani this happened often. Mr. Ferguson always found a fault in everything that Nani did. Probably because he thought he could get to the level of Cristiano Ronaldo."

If Ferguson did have such aspirations for his charge—and it seems certain he did—then he was not alone. Many United fans, and many casual observers, saw that level of potential in Nani’s physical attributes, and in the quality of some of the goals he scored and assists he provided (indeed, for his many failings he created a surprising number of goals) throughout the early years of his time at the club.

For whatever reason, it never happened. Perhaps he lacked the mental fortitude and dedication that Ronaldo so clearly has, or perhaps Ferguson’s abrasive training-ground methods only served to send Nani retreating into his shell, rather than force him out of it. He certainly seemed to be far more of an introvert as a person than Ronaldo, someone who found the spotlight that came with being a footballer far less to his liking than the man who has gone on to command more and more notoriety.

This, after all, is a player who lived with Ronaldo in his early days at Old Trafford and admitted that after moving out he sometimes got scared living alone in his large new home (again via the Daily Mail).

In 2010 he also admitted to Republik of Mancunia that he wouldn't mind if United signed "a friend" from Sporting ("that would be fantastic for me"), with the fansite noting the player was surprisingly shy "and even nervous" at a Nike event.

Such observations are not necessarily conclusive, but they do suggest a player who found everything else that came with being a top footballer difficult to handle. When Ronaldo left, and Nani was pushed and probed to be his successor, those difficulties must only have intensified.

After playing back in the familiar surroundings of Sporting for a season, Nani now heads for the Turkish Lig, a competition vociferously followed inside Turkey but (without wishing to be unduly dismissive) almost ignored outside of it. It would be little surprise if Nani now finds a level of form and consistency that has always escaped him, in an environment where the pressure and expectation is perhaps not quite so great.

Considering both Nani and Anderson won four Premier League titles and a Champions League during their time at Old Trafford, it seems ridiculous to suggest that their time in English football was a major disappointment. But it undoubtedly was: We all saw on more than one occasion the very talents that persuaded Ferguson to sign them, and so we all shared (to some extent) his frustration when neither player was able to fully realise it.

Ultimately, it seems Queiroz was right to wonder whether the young winger United had their eye on had the mental make-up to be a star at Old Trafford.

Nani and Ronaldo are perhaps a case study in the value of the talents you cannot see as much as those you can. Arriving from the same place, both had (or have) all the footballing ability in the world, but the diverging manner of their respective Old Trafford exits is perhaps most greatly down to the difference in perspective in the six inches between their ears.

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