David de Gea is sleepwalking towards retirement - but who can blame him after so many years in the spotlight at Man Utd?

Despite not playing any games since the FA Cup final defeat by Manchester City, De Gea's stock is still high. He won the Golden Glove award for keeping the most clean sheets in the Premier League last season and made his share of crucial saves as United finished third and reached two domestic cup finals.

Many have wondered if the club would have been better off keeping him rather than signing £47 million (£59m) Andre Onana, who has made a series of clangers in his first season and was one of the main factors behind United's dismal Champions League campaign.

De Gea did make a few gaffes himself last season, most notably in the nightmare Europa League defeat at Sevilla, but for many years he was United's most important player, winning the club's Player of the Year award in 2021-22 for a joint-record fourth time. He was Spain's No.1 for more than four years and was coveted by Real Madrid in 2015, the move only blocked by botched paperwork on transfer deadline day.

De Gea received multiple offers and enquiries over the summer from top-ranking teams in Europe - including Inter Milan - as well as bottom-half sides, according to The Athletic. But he could not agree a move and was reluctant to play for a team competing at the lower end of a league.

And one of the main stumbling blocks appears to be his salary demands. De Gea was deemed so important to United that they made him their highest-paid player in the summer of 2019 as he entered the final year of his contract, awarding him a stunning deal worth £375,000 ($474,000) per week. Cristiano Ronaldo usurped him as the top earner when he returned to United in 2021 but De Gea regained that status when the Portuguese left.

His salary dwarfed that of his contemporaries. Liverpool's No.1 Alisson Becker is reported to be on £200,000 ($255,000) per week, while Manchester City's Ederson is on £180,000 ($229,000) per week. He is thought to have earned almost triple that of Real Madrid's Thibaut Courtois, nearly double Barcelona's Marc-Andre ter Stegen and slightly more than Bayern Munich captain Manuel Neuer.

De Gea was willing to listen to offers from other sides last summer but none of them came close to what he was earning at Old Trafford, which worked out at just shy of £20m ($25m) per year.

Effectively, De Gea earned enough from his final four years with United alone to set him and his family up for life. His singer wife Edurne is also a high-earning celebrity and a judge on television show Spain's Got Talent. In short, there is no financial motivation for De Gea to keep playing.

Instead, De Gea appears to have been enjoying his time away from football and is relishing living back in Spain, having moved to England at the age of 20 to sign for United from Atletico Madrid. He is also enjoying spending extended time with his family as his long-term partner Edurne, who he has been with for eight years and married last summer, opted to live in Madrid over Manchester due to her career commitments. She gave birth to their daughter in 2021 in Spain.

He has posted videos on Instagram of him in goalkeeping training and is reported to do four sessions per week so that he is in shape should the right offer arrive. But above all he seems to be enjoying his leisure time. He has been playing a lot of padel, the fast-growing racquet sport which is a hybrid of squash and tennis, and running his eSports team Rebels Gaming.

De Gea spent some time back in Manchester in October, going out to dinner with Bruno Fernandes and Sergio Reguilon as well as attending the United women's team match with Paris Saint-Germain. His sojourn in Manchester led to speculation he could return to United, but one of the main reasons he was back in England was to fulfil his obligations as a British taxpayer.

While there is still a chance De Gea could return to playing after his hiatus as former Spain team-mate Isco has done with Real Betis, he appears to be sleepwalking towards retirement.

He has not made and public declarations about his future and has not given any interviews to media since leaving United. And he does not have an agent, cutting ties with Jorge Mendes in 2019, which limits his chances of finding a new club.

According to The Athletic, he seriously considered retiring from football altogether last summer, and if he does not find a suitable club this January it seems unlikely he'd be able to return to playing after more than a year away from the game.

While United's other great goalkeepers Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Sar did not retire until they were 39 and 40 respectively, it seems increasingly likely that De Gea will hang up his gloves at the age of just 33.

The fact that a player as talented and experienced as De Gea is still without a club might seem like a waste to many observers, but there is something refreshing about the fact he is taking time away from the sport which has dominated his life for the last 15 years.

He made his debut for Atletico Madrid at the age of 18 and quickly became their No.1 goalkeeper. Less than two years later he moved to United and was given the daunting task of succeeding Van der Sar, who had won multiple league titles with the Red Devils and played in three Champions League finals.

His adaptation period was far from easy and every mistake he made was heavily scrutinised, with many pundits believing he did not have the physique or mentality to succeed in England. De Gea eventually proved the doubters wrong and was so often United's saviour in their years in the wilderness after Alex Ferguson - who was like a father figure to him - retired in 2013.

But having finally settling in with United, he began to feel even more pressure as Spain's No.1, succeeding a national hero in Iker Casillas. De Gea was blamed when Spain were knocked out of Euro 2016 by Italy and suffered an embarrassing defeat by Russia in the last 16 of the 2018 World Cup.

He became a punching bag for the Spanish media, to the point that then-coach Luis Enrique berated journalists for their criticism of him in 2020, saying: "Blaming De Gea has turned into a vice, it turns you all on."

De Gea has not played for Spain since October 2020 and was last called up to the squad in November 2021. But playing for United meant he was always under the microscope and the last campaign was particularly tough as he struggled to play out from the back and seemed to lose confidence in his ability with the ball at his feet after a glaring error against Brentford.

All top-level goalkeepers have to have thick skins but club insiders say De Gea tended to go into his shell after a big mistake and could not shake off a bad game so easily. He was in the firing line on many occasions last season, making costly mistakes against Brentford, Sevilla, West Ham and in the FA Cup final against City.

He was naturally devastated by the way United treated him in June, which must have felt like a kick in the teeth after 12 years of service, repeatedly digging the team out of holes when the outfield players had let them down. Is it any wonder he has taken a step back?

De Gea's decision to take a breather and enjoy some peace and quiet away from the glare of the spotlight is a helpful reminder that football is not the only thing that matters in life.

While De Gea has not won as many honours as he might have liked (one Premier League, one FA Cup, two League Cups and a Europa League), he has spent a gruelling 12 years playing week in week out for arguably the biggest club in the world, rarely allowed time to catch his breath. He played 545 games for United, more than any other goalkeeper in the club's history, and kept 190 clean sheets, another record.

It should be no wonder he is less willing to take a step down and continue playing for the sake of it. If he has chosen to retire via the back door, good luck to him. He has more than earned it.