Football can be a cruel game as we all know. To be robbed of three points by a 90th minute equaliser, to see your club’s star man swan off to one of the league’s giants, or maybe it’s to see your country bow out of a tournament through a penalty shootout.
But what is crueller than watching a young star who had the world at his feet fizzle into disillusion?
These are the three most disturbing cases of young starlets flopping.
3. Jack Rodwell
At just 16 when he broke into Everton’s first team and after an impressive four seasons for the Toffees, Rodwell secured a £12million move thirty miles down the road to Manchester City.
When Manuel Pellegrini picked up the tools left by his predecessor Mancini, Rodwell became a tool that was never seen fit for any purpose and he was shipped off to Sunderland.
As the Black Cats saw back to back relegations, Rodwell was emerging as the whipping boy of the club’s humiliation. The ‘Sunderland ’Til I Die’ Netflix documentary captured his refusal to terminate the excessive £70,000 weekly salary that was contributing to the club’s financial turmoil.
With a cap for England at age 20 and a Premier League winners’ medal at 23, Rodwell’s career took an unlikely downwards spiral to Down Under, where he now plays in the A-League for Sydney FC.
Take a listen to my honourable mention, who didn’t quite make the list!
2. Hachim Mastour
Hachim Mastour took the Internet by storm in 2012 when the viral compilation of his trickery in a youth match was titled “The best 14-year-old in the world.”
After AC Milan blew an astonishing €500,000 on Mastour and he was pictured alongside Neymar Jr in a Red Bull advert, the young Italian-Moroccan had a lot to live up to.
After a failure to cement any position in an already drab Milan side, Mastour took up a two year loan offer from Malaga. But Mastour never tore up the La Rosaleda like he tore up the bumpy pitch in Reggio Emilia where the foundations for potential stardom were laid.
By June 2022, Mastour found himself in the second division of his parents’ native Morocco.
A player who’s worshipped youth blurred what it really takes.
Perhaps Hachim should have listened to his Milan manager Gennaro Gattuso more closely, who threatened to “knock his teeth out” if he didn’t buckle down.
1. Ravel Morrison
Described by Sir Alex Ferguson as one of the best talents he’d ever seen and suggesting he was better than Ryan Giggs at the same age, Ravel Morrison really is the one that got away.
Morrison’s talent is a talent that is still lauded today and has been since Phil Brogan spotted the eight year old for his local team in Wythenshawe. His troubled youth however is the root of his unsatisfactory stints at the thirteen clubs he has come across.
His 2011 charge of witness intimidation created an irremovable reputation, leaving clubs to take unconsidered ‘punts’ on Morrison.
The former director of football with him at Östersunds, David Webb, suggested that Morrison needed “somewhere he feels appreciated” and a “solid structure to his day”1.
With a lack of real investment into the Mancunian from the clubs he’s been across, and he himself never quite matching a professionalism with his ability, has left him fruitless in what was surely going to be a world full of possibilities.
- https://sport.optus.com.au/news/premier-league/os28570/ravel-morrison-story-derby-misunderstood#:~:text=But%20Morrison%20quickly%20developed%20a,and%20an%20unstable%20family%20environment. ↩︎
