Garry Monk, Fernando Forestieri and Diego Maradona: What happened to Manuel Hidalgo at Sheffield Wednesday?

“He’s very good technically,” Garry Monk said when quizzed on the mystery of new signing Manuel Hidalgo, his first as Sheffield Wednesday boss.
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“The one thing that stands out, as you’d expect with a young lad, is the work rate, the attitude towards what he’d done in that few weeks period,” Monk continued.

“If they can make that step up and progress them like we want to then there’ll be an opportunity in the first team.”

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That was on January 16 2020. Less than a year later, neither Monk or Hidalgo are still at Sheffield Wednesday, with the youngster having left less than a month after his old manager, with whom he is understood to have had a fairly limited relationship.

As announced in a shock Instagram post on Tuesday evening, the young Argentine is back in his homeland, having raised eyebrows by citing the death of Diego Maradona as part of the inspiration behind his decision. It brings to an end a five-year spell in England and 11 months in South Yorkshire that never quite took off.

Signed from Italian minnows Triestina for a small undisclosed fee, Hidalgo had impressed while on trial with Wednesday some months earlier, having been taken under the wing of countryman Fernando Forestieri.

Monk made clear from the outset that the tricky attacking midfielder had been brought in as an under-23 player by the club and that stripes would have to be earned in order for him to be considered for the first team.

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The Star were told in the short off-season that Hidalgo had been assured of more first team involvement and his big chance, perhaps, came when he travelled with Monk and the seniors to their week-long Loughborough training camp in August.

Manuel Hidalgo has left Sheffield Wednesday after terminating his contract with the club.Manuel Hidalgo has left Sheffield Wednesday after terminating his contract with the club.
Manuel Hidalgo has left Sheffield Wednesday after terminating his contract with the club.

The confidence and flair he had shown on the ball in the under-23s was showcased once more as he undertook the club’s first team initiation task by singing in front of the first team, swaying his hips mid-serenade. But that week was as much as the senior players saw of him.

Though he offered huge effort, sources close to the camp described his efforts in Loughborough as ‘unspectacular’.

That’s not to say he didn’t show moments of huge promise with the youngsters. An October wonder strike against Ipswich flooded social media and prompted speculation that he should be given a go with the misfiring first team, but unlike several of his under-23 teammates, it soon became clear that a clear path to the first team was never opened up.

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Though tricky and full of flair, the 20-year-old could drift into a tendency to fall in and out of games and began to find himself on the bench for Wednesday’s second string.

The departure of Forestieri, with whom he shared advisors and spent much of his time with while in Sheffield, appeared to be a blow for the youngster, who was suddenly alone in what was the third foreign culture he had to adapt to in five years, having been reared at the academy of Portuguese giants Benfica before making the switch to Italy.

Tough enough, you’d think, but compounded with the restrictions placed on players during the coronavirus pandemic, very difficult indeed.

Manuel Hidalgo leaves behind him a lingering sense of ‘what could have been’ at Sheffield Wednesday.

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