Di Maria was a £60m Man Utd flop who never wanted Old Trafford move (Mail)

One of the more incredible transfer rumours to circulate during the football shutdown came from Italy last month.

One media outlet suggested that Angel Di Maria could be on his way back to Manchester United from Paris Saint-Germain as part of a swap deal involving Paul Pogba.

Are they mad? Short of being dragged back to Old Trafford at gunpoint, Di Maria is about the last player you would expect to see wearing a United shirt again.

This is a man who made no effort to hide his dislike for the club long before his wife weighed into the debate spectacularly in a Spanish TV show on Wednesday morning.

'I begged Angel, any place but England,' said Jorgelina Cardoso, recalling Di Maria's £59.7million move from Real Madrid to United in 2014. 'One year later we were in Manchester – s***!'

Ms Cardoso lambasted the 'disgusting' food, English 'dolls' wearing too much make-up, and the 'weird' folk of Manchester. 'You are walking and you don't know if they are going to kill you or not,' she claimed.

Her feelings on that last point were no doubt fuelled by an attempted burglary at their luxury home in Prestbury five months after Di Maria joined United when raiders tried to force their way into the rear of the property using scaffold poles.

The Argentine and his family moved into the Lowry Hotel and never returned to the house. It was a deeply unsettling experience from which they never quite recovered. That summer he joined PSG for £44.3m with United taking a £16m hit on what had been the biggest transfer in the history of British football.

There was much more to Di Maria's failure to settle in England than issues off the pitch, however.

For a start, he had no wish to be at Old Trafford in the first place, insisting that he had effectively been forced out of Real after helping the club win a 10th European Cup.

'My intention was always to stay at Real,' he said later. 'After winning La Decima, I went to the World Cup with the hope of receiving the nod from the directors, which never came.

'Many lies were spoken. They always wanted to attribute a desire to leave the club, but it was not true. I ended up going to United.'

Life at Old Trafford started well with Di Maria scoring three goals in his first five games. But he did not agree with Louis van Gaal's decision to move him from the wing to a more central position where he found himself with his back to goal and less room to run.

'There were problems with the coach at the time,' he said. 'I started a game in one position and the next game in another. I scored goals playing in one position then suddenly the next game I was picked to play in a different position. This didn't help me settle.

'It's up to the manager where and how every player should play, but I think every player should be comfortable in that position.

'I'm very happy at PSG and it wasn't the case over there. It's more that they didn't let me settle properly than I couldn't settle.'

Di Maria's only other goal after that opening flurry was against Yeovil Town in the FA Cup. In total, he scored just four times in 32 appearances. Figures that hardly justified his transfer fee.

After being shown a second yellow card for shoving referee Michael Oliver during a FA Cup defeat to Arsenal in January, he made just one more start on the final day of the season against Hull, lasting just 23 minutes.

No-one was shocked to see his stay brought to an end after one season, but it's the depth of bad feeling towards his old club that is perhaps most surprising.

Di Maria's teammate at PSG, Marcin Bulka, revealed that the 32-year-old Argentine 'hates' United so much that he insists on changing the channel if they are playing on television.

That antipathy was apparent when Di Maria returned to Old Trafford for the first time last season and set up both goals as PSG took a 2-0 lead that was spectacularly overturned in Paris.

He was the target for abuse, and at one point a beer bottle, from United fans and appeared to mouth obscenities at them after the opening goal.

So his wife's comments are perhaps to be expected, even though her timing is a little peculiar. Maybe she's heard those transfer rumours as well.