Oops: David de Gea's car clamped for 'forgetting to pay tax'

IT IS not easy to stay anonymous when your car is clamped in a city-centre street and it just so happens to be a £150,000 (€172,500) Aston Martin Vantage – as Manchester United's David de Gea has just found out. 

And it is probably even more embarrassing when it happens because you forgot to pay your car tax and yet you have just come out of The Ivy after dinner.

De Gea, 29 – who became a dad for the first time in March when long-term girlfriend Edurne, 35, gave birth to their daughter Yanay – was forced to call a cab to get home after his night at the top eatery after spotting the ominous yellow metal triangle bolted to his wheel.

Nowadays, in the UK, it is no longer a legal requirement for a tax disc to be displayed in the windscreen – these were abolished in October 2014 when the system went digital – and old ones, especially rare versions, have fetched up to £355 (€408) on eBay.

A car like the Man U goalie's would typically cost around £505 (€581) to tax, but city police had detected that this was overdue.

Numerous passers-by photographed the clamped car with its 'Untaxed vehicle' sticker on the window (such as the pictures shown here, by Lilian Chan on Twitter, @bestgug), since they recognised it as belonging to De Gea – an Aston Martin Vantage worth as much as a small house or large flat is not an habitual sight in this north-western metropolitan area of just over half a million inhabitants.

It seems unlikely the Spaniard would have been unable to afford the annual tax, although dining at the Ivy is much cheaper in Manchester than in the original London branch – at the northern outpost, which opened three years ago, a three-course meal costs around £30 (€36) plus drinks.

And in any case, De Gea's performance on the pitch just hours later was unaffected by the stress of having his car immobilised and needing to grab a cab – Manchester United beat Leeds 5-1 the very next day.

It is not clear whether Edurne was at The Ivy with the father of her baby, since she works as a TV presenter in her native Madrid and commutes back and forth to the UK, but it is likely she will have spent her maternity leave, which is 16 weeks, in Manchester.

Edurne is equally as famous in Spain as David de Gea, since she is a regular on-screen presence and an established pop artist, as well as representing her country in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest.

Unfortunately, her track, Amanecer ('Sunrise') became yet another statistic in Spain's long run of very undeserved poor results, ranking 21st.