United signed Piqu\u00e9 from Barcelona\u2019s La Masia academy in 2004, after Sir Alex Ferguson<\/a> recognised his immense potential as a young Spanish Under-17 international. The club knew he hadn\u2019t signed a professional contract at Barcelona and took advantage of the situation.<\/p>\n Piqu\u00e9 would eventually return to Barcelona and go on to win every piece of silverware possible \u2013 for club and country. As a young defender, he was unable to break into United\u2019s back four because the greatest defensive partnership in Premier League<\/a> history (Nemanja Vidic<\/a> and Rio Ferdinand<\/a>) was being forged.<\/p>\n Nowadays, Piqu\u00e9 is involved in his Kings League and Sorare Rivals, a fantasy game.<\/p>\n Despite having tons of potential, Piqu\u00e9 was not getting the game time he wanted at United.<\/p>\n Ferguson had other priorities, and all parties concluded that it would be best to go their own ways as Piqu\u00e9 returned to Camp Nou.<\/p>\n Piqu\u00e9 made a total of 23 appearances for United before leaving the club, before going on to make 616 appearances for Barcelona throughout his career.<\/p>\n United didn\u2019t miss out so much because Ferguson still went on to build another Champions League<\/a>-winning side in 2008.<\/p>\n Speaking about his United exit, Piqu\u00e9 recalls a meeting with Ferguson where he was not convinced that he would get enough opportunities in the team.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I made the decision to leave, but not for a matter of money. I have never made decisions for money, rather I had a feeling at Manchester United,\u201d Piqu\u00e9 said on the latest episode of Podpah.<\/p>\n \u201cI sat with Alex Ferguson a couple of times and he explained to me everything he wanted to do with me. And I did not have the feeling that I was close to making the jump (to the first-team). So I made the decision to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Later in the podcast, he added: \u201cWhen Barcelona called, for me it meant the world. Moreover, I had an offer from Juventus at that moment that offered much more money and at the last moment Bar\u00e7a came and I did not even ask how much money they were offering, they offered much less, but I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to Barcelona, it was the dream fulfilled and from there this great story began with the club in which I played 15 years and we won all the titles many times.\u201d<\/p>\n Spanish players to play for Man Utd<\/p>\n Piqu\u00e9 was the second Spanish player to join United.<\/p>\n The initial Spanish import was Ricardo L\u00f3pez Felipe, who was a third-choice goalkeeper, making only a handful of senior appearances.<\/p>\n David de Gea<\/a> followed before spending 12 years at Old Trafford, and since then we\u2019ve had Victor Valdes, Ander Herrera<\/a>, Juan Mata<\/a> and Sergio Reguilon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerard Piqu\u00e9 opens up about when he decided it was the right time to leave Manchester United, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[123718,42219,403,99],"class_list":["post-219187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-gerard-pique","tag-sir-alex-ferguson","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gerard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2213241771.jpg\")
Photo by Tristar Media\/WireImageGerard Piqu\u00e9 meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson<\/p>\n