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A few hours after Danny Drinkwater joined Aston Villa in the first week of January, a friend asked if he wanted to go watch his new club in action.
Aston Villa was playing at Leicester City in the semifinals of the Carabao Cup, English soccer’s midweek afterthought, the night after Drinkwater’s move was confirmed. There was a space for him in an executive box at the King Power Stadium: Drinkwater could come along, pretty much incognito, and cast an eye over the Villa players who were, now, his teammates.
Politely, he declined the invitation. It is not especially hard to discern why. Leicester was, of course, where Drinkwater spent the happiest, most productive years of his career: a central cog in the team that first won promotion to the Premier League in 2014 and then, as is still occasionally pointed out whenever Leicester is mentioned, won the English title two years later.
It was at Leicester where Drinkwater grew into one of the most highly regarded midfielders in England. He won the Premier League. He made it to the quarterfinals of the Champions League. He played for England. He was good enough that Chelsea, the team that had succeeded Leicester as champion, paid $45 million to acquire him in 2017.
A few days after that deal went through, Chelsea, in one of those quirks that soccer throws up so frequently that you wonder if the whole thing is scripted, visited Leicester. Ngolo Kanté, a player who had left Leicester for Chelsea a year earlier, was given a rousing reception by his former fans. Drinkwater, named as a substitute, a little less so. The BBC described his welcome as “mixed.” It is a fairly transparent euphemism.
Perhaps that memory gave Drinkwater pause as he contemplated the idea of walking into the King Power, a few months short of three years on, to watch a game. Or, perhaps, it is something a little deeper. Perhaps he sensed that returning to Leicester, where his career topped out, would simply serve to remind him that he had fallen.
Since leaving Leicester, Drinkwater has made only 14 appearances in the Premier League. A dozen of those came in his first season at Chelsea, working under Antonio Conte. The following year, Conte’s successor, Maurizio Sarri, ignored Drinkwater entirely after the Community Shield, England’s traditional — and not entirely competitive — curtain-raiser.
He started this season on loan at Burnley, and — hampered by injury — he played once in the Carabao Cup and once in the Premier League. In January, frustrated by his lack of minutes, he canceled that loan and joined Villa instead. His first game was last weekend, a baptism of fire against Manchester City. Villa lost, 6-1. Drinkwater, clearly struggling to keep up, was held culpable for at least two of the goals. When he was substituted, it felt like an act of mercy.
Elite sports is a brutal environment, even among those who do no more than watch it. Drinkwater’s display made him something of a figure of fun: the fact he had been exposed so surgically by Kevin De Bruyne; and the fact his last three games in the Premier League have all been defeats to Manchester City, in the shirts of three different clubs.
But his story is better understood, really, as less a three-year punch line and more a cautionary tale, highlighting just how precarious a soccer career can be, the fragility of success and the damage that can be inflicted by one bad choice.
In Drinkwater’s case, it all turned on leaving Leicester. Chelsea as a club wanted to sign him; Conte, it has to be said, was a little more lukewarm. When his new midfielder was presented in 2017, Conte would only say that he had “specific characteristics” that he had been looking for.
When Conte left the next year, even that gossamer protection was removed. Drinkwater lost all hope under Sarri. Those who know him say his love for the game dwindled and died. He had the sense that whatever he tried would not be enough and so, after a while, he stopped trying. He felt isolated, angry, besieged.
The rejoinder here, of course, is the same as it always is: money. Drinkwater went to Chelsea for more money, and he has spent much of the last two years being paid a six-figure sum every week not to do very much. Sympathy, in those circumstances, tends to be in short supply, even if the explanation for it — he had the sort of childhood that contains so little money that you understand its importance all the more — should carry some weight.
But that money has not helped Drinkwater be happy. He has exhibited, in the last year or so, a self-destructive streak that has included a conviction for drunken-driving and a fight outside a Manchester nightclub that left him with damaged ankle ligaments. It is not the behavior, particularly, of a man perfectly content to pick up his paycheck and go home.
Six months ago, he changed his agent, proof that he knows he has, at the very least, been poorly advised. He cannot change, now, the choices he made. But you wonder if — over the next couple of weeks of the transfer window — a few players might do well to reflect on what happened to Drinkwater — not just how far he fell, but how fast, and all because of one wrong step.
Drinkwater will be 30 in March. He has lost his peak years. He is undertaking extra fitness training, and more gym sessions, to make up for the time he has lost. He is trying to rediscover, as clichéd as it sounds, his appetite for his work, his affection for the game. He knows that one choice, three years ago, has brought him here, to his last-chance saloon.
End of an Era? Maybe. Probably Not. But Maybe.
Barcelona, it was revealed this week, is now the richest soccer club in the world, in terms of revenue: according to the financial analysts Deloitte, it raked in $936 million last season, putting the Spanish champion ahead of Real Madrid and Manchester United for the first time.
That news emerged at roughly the same time as it was becoming clear that Barcelona is most definitely not the best-run club in the world. Its dismissal of its unloved coach, Ernesto Valverde, this week proved that rather neatly. The world knew Valverde had been fired about eight hours before Barcelona confirmed it. The club owed him better.
Amid all the self-immolation, one detail stood out: Lionel Messi has a clause in his contract that allows him to leave this summer. The clause, similar to one enjoyed by Xavi Hernández and Andres Iniesta previously, was included at the player’s behest, and in theory exists so Messi, 32, can assess his physical condition. In reality, it is a happiness clause: If Messi is unhappy, then he can walk.
It is unlikely that he would do so, of course: he has always said his loyalty to Barcelona outstrips any contract. But it is curious to wonder not only where he would go — How many clubs can afford him? Would he want to uproot his family? What sort of offer would appeal? — but whether, perhaps, he ought to.
Messi wants to win another Champions League title. That is his priority as he enters his twilight years. His presence alone means that could be with Barcelona; he can, after all, turn any game at all in his team’s favor, almost by himself. But as the chaotic firing of Valverde proves, he is not at a club with a cogent vision for its future. Might there not be some small temptation, for all his loyalty, to move somewhere he would not have to cover up everyone else’s mistakes?
A Tough Sell
It sounds, on the surface, like an easy task. Tottenham Hotspur needs to sign a striker to act as backup to Harry Kane: someone to relieve the burden from the club’s totem, a little, and to stand in for him when he is injured, as he is now, until April at the earliest.
There are plenty of candidates: Krzysztof Piatek of A.C. Milan, a team that desperately needs to raise funds to invest elsewhere; Edinson Cavani, out in the cold at Paris St.-Germain since the arrival of Mauro Icardi; Arkadiusz Milik, never quite settled at Napoli. There are plenty of strikers good enough to be Kane’s backup.
That is not the problem, though. The problem is that all of those players will know exactly how the pecking order works at Tottenham: If Kane is fit, he plays. Even if Kane is not fully fit, as the Champions League final last year proved, there is a pretty good chance that he plays. Spurs effectively have to persuade a player to come to north London with the pitch: “We want you to be our plan B.”
Naturally, that limits a club’s options. Some problems in soccer can be solved by money, of course, but not all of them. If a player wants regular game time, or has international aspirations, or just plain has too much ego to accept a backup role, they will not find that prospect compelling. It is easy to say Tottenham needs to sign a supporting cast for Kane. It is much, much more difficult to find someone to take on the job.
Correspondence
James Armstrong has a suggestion for reviving the F.A. Cup. “The top three in the Premier League plus the F.A. Cup winner should go to the Champions League, increasing the value of the trophy,” he wrote. “Teams that are effectively out of the running in the league have a possible large payoff; the race in the Premier League becomes for the top three, not the top four, making it a little tighter.”
My objection to this idea has always been that it in some way discredits the Champions League: What if a team in the top three wins the F.A. Cup, and then some no-marks get a spot in Europe’s most exclusive competition as runners-up? James has a solution: In that instance, the team that finishes fourth in the league gets the final spot. There is merit in this, but I think it is unlikely ever to come to fruition. We may have to make do with cosmetic changes — the end of replays, for example, and changing when the tournament is played — first.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for all the correspondence, as ever. I’m on Twitter for two hours per day, according to my phone: it’s a problem, and I freely admit that. Emails are always welcome to askrory@nytimes.com. And you can tell everyone you know about how nice it is to get an email every Friday here.
Have a great weekend.
Source: Soccer - nytimes.com
