Manchester United forward Antony has arrived in Spain ahead of his loan move to Real Betis.
A video shared on X by centredevils shows the Brazilian shortly after touchdown at the airport, pushing a trolley piled high with suitcases.
The 24-year-old is set to sign for the Spanish club on a straight loan deal for the rest of the season as he looks to get his career back on track – it was arguably last there at Ajax in 2022.
The days of his record-breaking start to life at Old Trafford, when he became the first United player to score in his first three Premier League matches for the club, are well and truly over.
The Brazilian will be glad of the opportunity for a fresh start and the chance to find some form, although the assumption is that this would simply serve to boost United’s asking price for him in the summer rather than offer him a way back into the team.
Since arriving in the dugout in November last year Ruben Amorim has used Antony sparingly, cautiously trialling the winger as a makeshift wing-back while prodding and probing his squad in his first few weeks in charge.
If Antony had played well, there is every chance Amorim would want to keep him around given Marcus Rashford’s abrupt disappearance into the background, the question marks over Alejandro Garnacho’s future and the side’s goalscoring issues.
But put simply, the 24-year-old fluffed his lines and fumbled every audition he was given, demonstrating himself simply not up to the level required to thrive in English football.
🚨🚨| Antony has arrived in Spain to complete his loan move to Real Betis. [@jmrodriguezper] pic.twitter.com/htDD3W2KIB
— centredevils. (@centredevils) January 25, 2025
Through no real fault of his own, Antony became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the club during the Erik ten Hag era.
He was brought in after a rough start to Ten Hag’s first season in charge, and Ajax had pound signs in their eyes as United coughed up a huge £86m to reunite the player with his former manager.
Since joining the Red Devils, he has scored 12 goals and made five assists in 96 games, and frequently turned in shoddy performances to frustrate the fans.
United can at least console themselves with an unusually well-negotiated deal, which will see Antony’s new temporary employers contributing 84% of his gigantic wages, trimming around £1.5m from United’s balance sheet for the rest of the season.
Feature image Shaun Botterill via Getty Images
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
