Manchester United winger on loan at Alavés discusses putting the wrong signature on a contract, his debt to Solskjær and future aims
Announce Pellistri. The transfer window was into added time, the clock was ticking and they were getting nervous, watching the seconds slip away and hitting f5 over and over. They were at Facundo Pellistri’s place, anyway. It was after midnight, deadline day October 2020, and
Manchester United had said one more signing was coming, keeping supporters – and him – on edge. An extension had been requested but even that was running out. All because he wrote his name wrong.
“I had sent off the paperwork, ‘done’,” Pellistri recalls, sitting in the canteen at Deportivo Alavés, where he is on loan, teammates eating at another table. “But they came back: ‘No, no, the signatures don’t match.’ I had signed the contract with my signature but they said it had to be the same as my national ID card – and I’d had that since I was 10. I had to re-do it: scan everything again, print it off, sign it with a kid’s signature – write my name neatly, basically – and send it back.