Yahoo News I didn't talk to Erik ten Hag - I left Manchester United to feel loved
Andreas Pereira says he left Manchester United to go and "feel loved" as he detailed how Sir Alex Ferguson lured him to Old Trafford from Erik ten Hag at PSV Eindhoven.
The 28-year-old left the North West in the summer of 2022 after a series of loan spells at the likes of Granada, Valencia, Lazio before returning to Brazil with Flamengo. He enjoyed a fruitful spell back in his native Brazil and earned a move in the Premier League to the Cottagers.
Pereira dodged talks with Erik ten Hag in a bid to see out his departure and while there was question marks over his departure, he has proved the doubters wrong as Marco Silva's side continue to defy expectations in the English top-flight.
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“Leaving United, you’re like, ‘Am I really going to do this? Am I sure?’ In the end, you’re never 100 per cent sure, really. Sometimes you think stay and have another go. Other times, you have to leave," said Pereira on Vibe with Five.
“I wanted to play, after COVID, I wanted to play. I was going crazy, wanting to play in the Premier League. I wanted to show that I was good enough, I was very close to joining Everton and suddenly my father called me and said, ‘Andreas, you never played in Brazil, you’re Brazilian’.
“I was like, ‘Where do we go then?’ The president of Flamengo jokingly called my dad and said, ‘If he wants to come, he can come’.
“Everyone at United said, ‘You’re crazy, you’ll stay in Brazil, you’ll never come back to Europe’. Everyone in my family wanted me to come [to Brazil] but they were like, ‘No, what are you doing?’
“I wanted to play in Brazil and want to feel loved. I didn’t feel the love that I thought I should get. I wanted to feel loved by my own people, play close to my family and enjoy football.”
He added: “This was when I came back to England, to Fulham. Erik ten Hag, he worked at PSV when I was 16 years old. Before leaving for United, the [PSV] president and Erik ten Hag came to speak to me and my dad and said, ‘Look everything is set up for you at PSV, if you stay here you’re going to play in the first team’. But I’d just been to United and spoke with Fergie. I was like, ‘I’m going to United’.
“That’s why I didn’t want to speak to Erik because I knew him and I knew that, at the time, it was always a conversation, like, ‘Andreas, stay here. You’re not going to play every game, maybe one game in every three, you’ll be around the squad’. That’s not what I wanted, I wanted to play.“
