The seldom less than insightful or illuminating Jeff Stelling previewed the Sporting Lisbon vs Chelsea game on Sky Sports 5 on Tuesday evening.
After waxing lyrical about Chelsea’s start to the season and Diego Costa’s goalscoring form, the conversation moved on to Sporting.
The first name mentioned was the much sought after William Carvalho. As it turned out, he didn’t have the greatest game and was culpable of dangerous over elaboration on several occasions in what seemed to be a definite case of a player trying too hard to impress on the big stage.
The next name on the lips of the virtuoso presenter was Nani. Stelling suggested that the move to Sporting might not only relaunch the 27 year old’s career, but that it might ultimately revive his Manchester United career.
Nani has enjoyed something of a renaissance in Portugal this season – soccersweep had always assumed that a change would be as good as a rest for this lad – but his performance against Chelsea proved beyond doubt that the same old foibles remain.
He was regularly explosive and troublesome in his approach play. But, as usual, there was little to no end product and Nani seemed bereft of ideas once he got to the danger zone. Once or twice he excited the home support by hitting shots which went close. But ‘close’ won’t win games for Sporting or Manchester United. And Nani, who is 28 in November, showed that he is not at the level required to improve Manchester United this season or in the future.
Sadly, Nani remains a player with all the physical attributes to be a top footballer, but who still lacks the football intelligence and vision to properly exploit those gifts.
Hopefully he will remain in Portugal beyond this season and continue to enjoy his football at the club where he made his name. But in response to Jeff’s suggestion that Nani could still return and do a job for Manchester United, most Reds fans would surely say ‘no thanks mate.’
United fans: any future for Nani in Manchester?
