CF Montreal Sign Free Agent Alexis Sanchez as a Designated Player

CF Montreal have signed Alexis Sanchez as a free agent, giving the club a Designated Player with a resume few in MLS history can match. The Chilean forward is under contract through the 2027 Sprint Season with an option for 2027-28, the club announced Tuesday.

“I am very happy to join CF Montreal and take on this new challenge,” Sanchez said. “I’m grateful to the club for the confidence they’ve shown in me, and I’m eager to put my experience to work so that we can reach our objectives and create memorable moments for our supporters. I’m here to give everything I have for the club and for this city.”

A resume built across two decades

Sanchez, 37, spent the past 18 seasons in Europe after coming through South American sides Cobreloa, Colo-Colo and River Plate. Across that span he tallied 215 goals and 154 assists in 788 games and won 20 trophies at club level, a body of work that stands among the most decorated of any player to arrive in MLS.

He most recently played for LaLiga side Sevilla after stops in England with Arsenal and Manchester United, Italy with Inter Milan and Udinese, Spain with FC Barcelona and France with Marseille. That run through some of the sport’s biggest clubs makes him one of the highest-profile free agents to sign in MLS this year.

His Arsenal years remain the peak of that European career. After joining from Barcelona in 2014, Sanchez scored 80 goals in 166 appearances across three seasons, adding 45 assists in the process, a combined goal contribution total that no other Arsenal player matched in that period at the club. His move to Manchester United in January 2018 did not work out the same way. Sanchez managed just five goals in 45 appearances for United before being loaned, and eventually transferred permanently, to Inter Milan in 2019 and 2020.

He rebuilt his career from there, moving through Inter Milan, Udinese and Marseille before joining Sevilla, where he closed out last season with four goals in 30 appearances across all competitions. That run through five clubs across three countries in the years after leaving Manchester United shows a player who kept finding new challenges rather than winding down quietly, and it is that restless streak, as much as the trophy count, that Montreal are banking on translating into MLS.

Internationally, Sanchez’s 168 caps and 51 goals are both records for Chile. He featured at the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups and is a two-time Copa America champion, winning in 2015 and 2016, the second of those coming at the expense of Lionel Messi and Argentina on penalties. In that 2016 tournament, Sanchez was awarded the Golden Ball as the competition’s best player.

What Montreal are getting

Luca Saputo, Montreal’s senior director of recruitment and sporting methodology, described the signing as central to the club’s plans for the rest of the season and beyond. “The arrival of Alexis Sanchez represents an important step in our sporting project,” Saputo said. “Alexis possesses exceptional technical quality and experience at the highest level of world football. His personality, leadership and competitive mindset fully align with our club’s identity and ambitions. We are of firm belief that he will have an immediate impact both on the field and in the locker room.”

That last point, about impact in the locker room as much as on it, speaks directly to where Montreal currently sit. The club are outside the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs field, 14th in the Eastern Conference with 16 points, and are being led by Philippe Eullaffroy on an interim basis. Adding a player with Sanchez’s trophy history and experience of high-pressure dressing rooms is as much about culture as it is about goals.

Montreal’s season took a turn earlier this year when the club fired head coach Marco Donadel after the team fell to a 1-6-1 record, including a home loss to Philadelphia that proved the final straw. Donadel had replaced Laurent Courtois in March 2025 and left with a 7-20-9 record in MLS. Eullaffroy, previously the head coach at McGill University, stepped in on an interim basis, while assistants Jacopo Falanga and Lorenzo Pinzauti were also let go as part of the same restructuring.

Sanchez’s arrival gives Eullaffroy an experienced attacking option to lean on as he tries to lift Montreal out of the bottom half of the Eastern Conference table for the rest of the season, even as the club continues to operate under an interim coaching setup rather than a permanent appointment.

How the Designated Player rule makes it possible

Sanchez occupying a Designated Player slot is what allows Montreal to carry a player of his profile without the deal disrupting the rest of the roster. Under MLS rules for 2026, the Team Salary Budget sits at $6,425,000 with a Maximum Salary Budget Charge of $803,125. The Designated Player mechanism lets clubs sign up to three players whose total compensation exceeds that maximum charge, with the club covering the difference outside the salary budget rather than having the player’s full pay count against the cap.

Sanchez signed after the opening of the Secondary Transfer Window, so his budget charge is set at $401,562.50 rather than the full maximum figure, a detail that gives Montreal additional flexibility elsewhere on the roster even with a marquee name now occupying a Designated Player spot. It is the same mechanism that has allowed MLS clubs across the league to add high-profile international veterans in recent years without blowing up their overall roster construction.

Continuing a tradition of marquee arrivals

Montreal have a history of bringing in recognizable names to lead the club, including Ivorian striker Didier Drogba and Italian defender Alessandro Nesta in the mid-2010s. Sanchez joins that list as a player charged with providing veteran leadership and quality from an accomplished career, the same role Drogba and Nesta were asked to play when they arrived in Quebec. The same Designated Player mechanism that brought Drogba and Nesta to Montreal, and that has powered marquee signings across the league in recent years, from Lionel Messi’s move to Inter Miami on down, is what makes Sanchez’s arrival possible now.

The road ahead

Sanchez arrives with Montreal in the middle of a difficult campaign, sitting outside the playoff positions with the club working through an interim coaching arrangement following a managerial change. His signing does not immediately solve those structural issues, but it gives the locker room a player who has been through Copa America finals and Champions League knockout rounds across four different countries.

How much of an on-field impact Sanchez can have will depend on fitness and form after a modest final season in LaLiga, where he scored four goals in 30 appearances across all competitions for Sevilla. MLS clubs have had mixed results integrating veteran attackers arriving in the second half of a season, but few of those signings have come with a resume as decorated as the one Sanchez brings to Montreal.

For a club currently searching for direction both on the field and on the sideline, adding a player who has won 20 trophies and set Chilean records for caps and goals is a statement of intent regardless of where the standings sit today. Montreal’s supporters will find out quickly enough whether Sanchez can still influence games at 37, but the club has made clear it sees his arrival as the start of a new chapter rather than a short-term fix.

The move also fits a broader pattern across MLS this year, as clubs continue to use Designated Player slots to bring in South American and European veterans with international pedigree well into their thirties. What sets Sanchez apart within that trend is simply how much he achieved before arriving in North America. Few players walking into an MLS locker room this season can say they have played in a World Cup, lifted a Copa America, or been named the best player at a major international tournament, and Sanchez has done all three.

Montreal’s front office will be judged over the coming months not just on how Sanchez performs individually, but on whether his presence helps stabilize a club still searching for a permanent head coach and still working to climb out of the bottom half of the Eastern Conference. The signing gives the fan base something to be excited about regardless of how the rest of the season unfolds, and gives Eullaffroy a genuine difference-maker to call on as he works to show the club he deserves the role beyond an interim tag. Whatever happens with the coaching search, Sanchez’s arrival ensures the second half of Montreal’s season will be watched far more closely than it might otherwise have been.