Manu Garcia Sporting youth midfielder, leaves Sporting to accept an offer from Manchester City.
The Spaniard player was also a target of Real Madrid and Barcelona, as well as having had contacts through his father, with firm proposals, plus other English clubs have been interested, but no concrete bids.
Sporting had made an offer, to be considered by the Sporting technicians as one of the most promising players at the club. He even got to play with the youth team, despite having started the season in the second academy team with an unusual progression.
José María Meana Acebal, director of Sporting, lamented yesterday that "some work done on a small club like ours and most powerful leverage other clubs." Gijón coach added that "we can not do anything because the players are free to the end of the second year cadet, as in the case of Manu Garcia", resulting in an entity like Sporting "a feeling of helplessness."
Sporting's Manu Garcia arrived three years ago from the club Astur, along with Steven Prieto the recent international, and two other players, under a collaboration agreement with Sporting have with Oviedo.
According to Sporting's technical report, Manu Garcia is an attacking midfielder with a style of play similar to Barcelona's Xavi, but with better options in defence.
So far, English clubs were tracking better trained players from clubs like Barcelona. Were cases of Pique and Cesc, among others, who were later recovered by the Catalan club with some important transfers.
In the case of Manu Garcia, his father got word of the offers just over a month ago. After carefully analyzing the details of the proposals, one aspect that was influential was the ability to practice the language (English), plus the future he could have in a club with Manchester City's structure, which has Spanish sports director Txiki Beguiristáin, whose functions are to hunt talent.
For this department, the British club in Spain has the services of scouting David Fernández Miramontes, former striker at Deportivo, Sevilla and Toledo, who also played in the Scottish Football at the start of the new century, who and Manchester led to two other players like Galician projection to Manu García, among others.