Andrey Santos has been confirmed as Manchester United\u2019s first signing of the summer and will take the club\u2019s No.17 shirt as the club begins a midfield rebuild that was considered urgent even before Casemiro\u2019s recent farewell. The number comes with a varied history at Old Trafford, and Santos arrives having rebuilt his career across three countries.<\/p>\n
Santos turned professional at Vasco da Gama at 16. He moved to Europe in 2023 to join Chelsea aged 18, and a loan spell at Nottingham Forest did not work out as planned. An impressive 18 months at Strasbourg restored his reputation and left him ranked inside the top 20 most expensive Manchester United signings of all time.<\/p>\n
He becomes the club\u2019s 11th Brazilian player after Kl\u00e9berson, Anderson, Rafael, F\u00e1bio, Andreas Pereira, Fred, Alex Telles, Antony, Casemiro and Matheus Cunha. Rodrigo Possebon was born in Brazil but later represented Italy at international level.<\/p>\n
Santos\u2019s personal shirt history shows a small set of numbers. The digits 8 and 18 stand out from his time at Vasco da Gama and Strasbourg. At Chelsea he was initially given 20, later wore 17, with 12 used during his Nottingham Forest loan. For much of his junior Brazil career he often wore 5 in a defensive midfield role, while for the senior Sele\u00e7\u00e3o he has been assigned 18.<\/p>\n
The Premier League\u2019s system of assigned squad numbers dates from 1993, so some of the modern numerals have a relatively short but eventful United lineage. No.17 was first worn by Colin McKee, who made a single appearance in a 0\u20130 draw against Coventry City in May 1994. Andy Cole wore 17 when he became the first player of the Premier League era to score five goals in a match, against Ipswich Town in February 1995, though Cole later made his main contribution to United wearing No.9.<\/p>\n
Raimond van der Gouw carried the number for six years, followed by brief spells for Michael Stewart and Liam Miller. Henrik Larsson had a short loan stint in 2007, after which Nani became the number\u2019s most successful occupant, winning four Premier League titles and the Champions League across seven years. Subsequent wearers included Daley Blind and Fred. The most recent holder before Santos was Alejandro Garnacho, who wore 17 when he scored the overhead kick that claimed the 2024 FIFA Pusk\u00e1s Award.<\/p>\n
Santos steps into a shirt with mixed history, joining a squad that expects immediate returns from its summer signings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andrey Santos is Manchester United\u2019s first summer signing and will wear the No.17 shirt with legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1513],"tags":[227,944,1033],"class_list":["post-17199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-man-utd-transfer-news","tag-alejandro-garnacho","tag-andrey-santos","tag-brazilian-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}