As elite football mercilessly continues it’s juggernauting course towards a European Super League and the franchisation of the sport, disenfranchisement abounds not just for fans, but the players as well.
There are currently several players at top European Clubs who seem to have driven into a ditch and can’t get out. Mesut Ozil at Arsenal. Paul Pogba and Alexis Sanchez at Manchester United. Neymar at PSG and Gareth Bale at Real Madrid, to name a few.
All of the above are players whose talent could, given the right luck, hard work and circumstance, take them anywhere they wanted in football. The game has swallowed them up, though, and now they all appear to be trapped in some sort of existential emo rock nightmare.
In the past, players like these would have taken a step down. They would have moved to a team that’s a little less competitive and a little more obscure, often with quite romantic and redemptive results.
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One of the great joys of football is seeing an unlikely marriage between a player and a club succeed. I myself have fond memories of signing Pavel Nedved for Fulham in FIFA 2005, and I know I’m not the only one to do something like that.
Unfortunately, the wages of anybody who plays for a top club are too prohibitive for the oddball cousins of the football pyramid. Pogba, Ozil etc will either move to another top-tier team or to a league like China or the MLS, where they can still earn huge sums of money. Alas, we are never going to see Neymar rock up at Birmingham City and realise that the English west midlands was his spiritual home all along.
To mourn the end of this phenomenon, we thought we’d take a look at a few of the best football redemption stories from recent times when players took an unexpected turn in their careers.
André-Pierre Gignac
André-Pierre Gignac was one of those late 2000’s/early 2010s players that was tipped to make it big, but never quite made it. The French striker started well enough, winning the French golden boot while playing for Toulouse with 24 goals in 2009. He then joined Marseille, where he scored 77 goals and won two French cups.
Big money moves to the Premier League never materialized, and he couldn’t establish himself in the French national team. He probably could have stayed in France and become a stalwart of the league or gone somewhere else in Europe, even if he never reached new heights.
However, no one expected what happened next. In 2015, he moved to Tigres UANL of the LigaMX in Mexico. Who goes to play for Mexico? Especially when they could have stayed in Europe? The consensus at the time was that Gignac had lost his passion for the game, and just wanted to have a lovely old time playing in an easy league inbetween sunbathing and drinking.
On the contrary, moving to the Mexican league reinvigorated Gignac, who ended up scoring vital goals to help Tigres win cup games and get into the playoffs, winning the hearts of the fans in the process. On the 4th of August, Gignac scored his 105th Tigres goal, becoming the team’s all time top scorer. As football redemption stories go, that’s not bad. Good decision, André-Pierre!
Bradley Wright-Phillips
Bradley Wright-Phillips is the son of Arsenal legend and every Londoner’s wannabe best mate, Ian Wright. He started his career in the Manchester City academy with his older brother, Shaun, who had top flight spells with Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers, and Manchester City.
Bradley failed to live up to the heights of his father and brother in England, and joined the New York Red Bulls of the MLS in 2013. It was a move that paid off, as he is now the Red Bulls’ all-time top scorer with 126 goals. He holds the MLS record for the most goals in a season with 27, and got to play with Thiery Henry, which ain’t half bad. His brother eventually joined him at the Red Bulls in 2015 only for the move to not work out, and Shaun Wright-Phillips now plays in America’s second tier. Bradley now holds the dual honour of being one of the most inspirational football redemption stories in the game, as well winning as one of the most comprehensive sibling rivalry victories ever.
Clarence Seedorf
During the 2012 European Championships, Italian striker Mario Balotelli celebrated a goal by ostentatiously flexing his abs. Afterwards, a picture of Clarence Seedorf smiling (not flexing) went viral that put Balotelli to shame. The veteran of Ajax, Holland, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and A.C Milan was in impeccable shape, and at 36 years old looked much better suited to top level sport than the 21 year old Balotelli.
It’s what made Seedorf’s 2012 transfer to Botafogo in Brazil even more surprising. One of the most decorated players in history, who can play multiple positions, could surely have stayed in the limelight a little bit longer. The European football world assumed that Rio de Janeiro would be Seedorf’s retirement home. However, he had one last day in the sun, winning the league title with Botafogo in 2013, and in the process securing his legend status in two continents.
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Kevin-Prince Boateng
Kevin-Prince Boateng has taken the journeyman trope as far as he possibly can, and subverted it entirely. The list of clubs the winger has represented so far includes Reinickendorfer Füchse, Hertha Berlin, Portsmouth, Tottenham Hotspur, Borussia Dortmund, Schalke 04, Genoa, A.C Milan, Las Palmas, Sassuolo, and Eintracht Frankfurt. He is still going, and currently plays for Fiorentina.
The cherry on the cake of Boateng’s career is his 6 month loan move to play as a target man, of all things, at Barcelona, of all teams. Rather than being regarded as a problem player, or someone who will never fit in anywhere, Kevin-Prince Boateng has become suave, international player who is held in high esteem in whatever dressing room he walks in to. Nonetheless, to fall from the heights of A.C Milan to Las Palmas, Frankfurt and Sassuolo only to come back and play for a team like Barcelona is quite a turnaround. Who knows where he’ll end up next?
