Alexis Sánchez has signed with CF Montréal for the rest of the 2026 MLS season and through the 2027 sprint campaign. Chile's all-time top scorer — 51 international goals — is now heading to the Eastern Conference's 14th-placed side. Make of that what you will.
The signing has a logic to it. Sánchez managed four goals and two assists for Sevilla last season, a sharp drop from his peak. Playing as a No. 10 or false nine at 37, slowing his game down to survive, he needs a league where that pace of play isn't a liability. MLS, in theory, offers that space. But anyone thinking this is automatic should remember what happened to James Rodríguez at Minnesota United — six games, no impact, gone.
The roster problem no one's talking about
Here's where the concern sits. Montréal have no other Designated Players. Their U-22 Initiative picks are defender Jalen Neal and midfielder Hennadii Synchuk. Their average squad age without Sánchez is 24.5. He's not walking into a team that needs a finishing touch. He's walking into a rebuild that needs everything.
Compare that to how other European names landed in MLS this cycle. Antoine Griezmann joined Orlando City alongside DPs Martín Ojeda and Marco Pašalić. Robert Lewandowski at Chicago Fire had Philip Zinckernagel and Jonathan Bamba around him on day one. Thomas Müller signed with Vancouver when they were already leading the standings. Son Heung-min complemented an LAFC attack built around Denis Bouanga.
Sánchez gets Prince Owusu — 10 goals in 17 games this season, genuinely dangerous — and not much else. Owusu is good. He's not a supporting cast.
Montréal's managing director Luca Saputo described the signing as "an important step in our sporting project," pointing to Sánchez's "exceptional technical quality" and leadership. That's all true. The question isn't whether Sánchez is good for Montréal. It's whether Montréal is good enough for Sánchez to matter.
What a best-case scenario actually looks like
At his sharpest — the 18-goal season at Marseille in 2022-23, the 17-assist campaigns at Milan in 2019-20 and 2020-21 — Sánchez was the best player on competitive rosters with real depth around him. Montréal rank sixth-worst in MLS for attack. Getting Sánchez back to anything near those numbers requires a team structure that simply isn't there yet.
There's also the fitness question. His minutes dropped significantly in his final European seasons, and MLS has its own physical demands — long-haul travel, varying surfaces, tight turnarounds. Stade Saputo's natural grass buys him something. The schedule condensed into 16 remaining regular season games plus a 14-game sprint season is actually manageable for a player who can no longer grind a full European campaign.
- Sánchez's best realistic role: mentor and spark plug, not primary creator
- Biggest short-term value: lifting Owusu and Montréal's younger players in a high-stakes final stretch
- Biggest risk: thin squad support makes individual form almost irrelevant to the team's ceiling
Montréal haven't reached the MLS Cup playoffs in eight of the last nine years. Sánchez is their biggest signing since Didier Drogba in 2015. That's either inspiring or a warning sign, depending on how you read the last decade of this club's trajectory.
If further signings follow, this starts to look like a genuine project. If Sánchez is the project, Montréal are essentially betting their 2026-27 ambitions on a 37-year-old playing the best football of his late career in a league he's never experienced. That's a long-odds wager — and the market should probably reflect it.
