The allure of players allowed to leave by the elite proves too great for a stepping-stone club but the Colombian’s reunion with Carlo Ancelotti may be a gamble worth taking
Potential can be a curse. Show too much too early and it will define you, so you are measured not by what you have done but against the future that once seemed within your grasp. And when age finally takes its toll, when the world stops waiting for you to become what it seemed you once could be, when you are written off with a dismissive shrug as a could-have-been then, in England at least, there are really only two places you can go: West Ham or Everton.
They are populated by the Lost Boys of the global game. When the elite will take you no more, there will still be a place in these Neverlands, clubs who will pay the wages of a player at their notional peak, even as time saps at them and reduces their value, even as hunger is spent and the drift into retirement has become inevitable.
Continue reading…The allure of players allowed to leave by the elite proves too great for a stepping-stone club but the Colombian’s reunion with Carlo Ancelotti may be a gamble worth takingPotential can be a curse. Show too much too early and it will define you, so you are measured not by what you have done but against the future that once seemed within your grasp. And when age finally takes its toll, when the world stops waiting for you to become what it seemed you once could be, when you are written off with a dismissive shrug as a could-have-been then, in England at least, there are really only two places you can go: West Ham or Everton.They are populated by the Lost Boys of the global game. When the elite will take you no more, there will still be a place in these Neverlands, clubs who will pay the wages of a player at their notional peak, even as time saps at them and reduces their value, even as hunger is spent and the drift into retirement has become inevitable. Continue reading…
