The French newspaper Le Parisien reported this week that Ángel Di María already has “one foot in Paris”. For those who watched Di María play for Manchester United through the winter and spring it may be tempting to wonder about the location of the other foot. Where could it be? Also in Paris but lost on the Métro? Back in Manchester overhitting yet another in-swinging cross? Or simply scuttling off down one of those familiar blind alleys, before eventually falling over and turning to remonstrate with some unspecified adversary, eyes wide, hair prickling up, looking like a very sad, wise, hyper-evolved squirrel forced to confront the basic futility of its own existence while being jeered at by youths in quilted sports jackets.

Ángel Di María is Manchester United’s glorious nonconformist | Richard Williams Read more

Oh, Ángel. It hasn’t been great has it? Who could blame him, really, if the Premier League’s most expensive – and at his best, best – player was to complete the move to Paris Saint-Germain that was stymied last summer by financial fair play rules. It isn’t hard to see what went wrong for Di María in a team where the manager always seemed to be searching for more control, more structure, less arm-waggling, maverick creativity. Played too wide, unsettled by a burglary at home, hamstrings twanging, in his last 28 United matches Di María scored just once. From 21 February to the end of the season he had three shots at goal in the Premier League.

And by the end Di María had simply run himself into a state of invisibility in a league that has some very simple, specific requirements even of its best attacking players. In England Di María’s default opposite number is somebody along the lines of Jon Walters: the kind of high-energy Premier League hustler who is often portrayed as a kind of footballing labrador, all eager, shining doe eyes and a lovely wet nose, but who presents a very specific, very disciplined kind of challenge. To succeed a player like Di María needs to be ready to run backwards as well as forwards, to learn as other creative players have that the corollary of all that extra space in front is an opposition player willing to exploit the space behind.

He can do this, of course. He’s a brilliant, and brilliantly committed team player. At United he has simply been unlucky to find himself paired with a manager also learning the ropes on the hoof, and who was undoubtedly frazzled at times in the autumn by the Premier League’s one outstanding quality, its sheer physical relentlessness.

Not that any of this matters too much. Star players have failed before. They will fail again. There is almost something grand and authentically cool about failing at United, where big money players have often come and gone down the years, waved fondly on their way while the club pounds on without them. Di María may even end up staying, keeping fit, tweaking his game and winning player of the year.

The more interesting point here is simply Di María’s rarity value. When he came to United he had been man of the match in the summer’s Champions League final, had 24 assists and 15 goals for Real Madrid and was widely considered one of the top three or four players in the world. And this is the key. At that point Di María was also the only player in that position – an outright A-list, top of the tree, in his prime footballer – to have ever come to the Premier League from abroad.

This may sound a little odd at first but it’s true. For all the deadline-day inanity, the private planes, the industry of acquisition, the Premier League has never before managed to attract one of the world’s best players in his prime, in peak form, without baggage or complications. There have been great players, but generally these have fallen into three sub-genres.

First the ageing A-lister: Gianfranco Zola, who always seemed so diligent and polite, like a favourite uncle playing three-and-in in the garden, or Laurent Blanc with his socks rolled down looking surprised. Second, the comeback star, players whose career has hit some kind of buffer. Dennis Bergkamp, for example: all pure, clean lines and luminous geometric precision, but in need of a home after Internazionale, or the post-Barcelona Yaya Touré. And thirdly stars in the making: the young Cristiano Ronaldo before the Muscled Emperor Years, Luis Suárez in pre-take off mode, the young Eden Hazard, maybe. Sergio Agüero bucks the trend, just about, for now.

For for all its TV rights muscle – £14bn and counting – the Premier League remains the rich kid no one really wants to sit with at lunch, unable to attract the real A-listers at their peak. There are some obvious reasons why this should be the case. Back in the early days Serie A was still the real draw, not just flush with cash but with great coaches, great technical football, a natural home for the best Brazilians and Dutch. These days Real Madrid and Barcelona have both annihilating budgets and irresistible prestige, a self-propelling elite of such magnetism a player as good as Arda Turan is happy simply to not play for them for five months, to become a Barcelona un-player, to be més que un bloke sitting around applauding in a suit.

In part – so the Premier League tells itself – this is because of the slog, the grind, the lack of easy games. Our league is a hard league, a real man’s league, not a league for the faint-hearted, or those in search of a balmy climate or easy Mediterranean luxury. Really, though, the issue here is perhaps simply the same old issue. There are only so many global stars to go round. And while it’s great to take on the just-below-the-best, the rescue cats of football’s top rank, the fact is the Premier League simply needs to start growing its own. Germany and Italy make their own stars, even their own World Cup winners. But England’s top tier has produced Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, the United class of ’92, a few others, but nothing much for a while.

And now Di María may be off, although it is to be hoped he will stay and bloom. He is a wonderful, flawed, relentlessly accommodating attacking force, not to mention a player the Premier League perhaps needs a little more than it might let on.