○On Monday, Rayo Vallecano released James Rodriguez on a free transfer. The stay was not very long. In four and a half months with the club, he played 136 minutes in league matches. He has only started once in La Liga. Rodriguez is currently 33 years old. Since leaving Everton in 2021, he has started just 37 league games and scored just 10 goals. This is the sixth consecutive season in which he has been released on a free transfer, having moved from Real Madrid to the team that is currently 12th in the table via Qatar, Greece and Brazil. The feeling that your career is coming to an end.
Yet, in the three-and-a-half years since his last game for Everton, Rodriguez has made 32 appearances for Colombia. During his time with Rajo, he played 374 minutes in international matches. Granted, he doesn't play many full games, but there are few other signs of decline. As Colombia reached the final of last year's Copa America, he was named the tournament's best player. His career seems to have followed two parallel lines. At club level, he was a fading star, a player who probably never reached his full potential. However, at the international level, despite the fall of his career, he is still a maestro.
While many players seem reluctant to take on international assignments, for Rodriguez club soccer is a means to an end, ensuring a paycheck and top-class training facilities to keep him sharp for the real job of playing for Colombia. I feel that this is a way to do so. He is increasingly seen as an outdated player.
If Rodriguez had been born in 1961 instead of 1991, he would have been one of the great playmakers of the late '80s and early '90s, a midfield shield protected by two or three forwards who ran away. I might have given it a feed. He wouldn't have been expected to track back, chase and press. He could have been Ricardo Bochini, Dragan Stojković, Teofil Abega…though, if that were the case, he would have been competing with Carlos Valderrama for a place in the Colombian national team, and the great Pacho. This must have been the case when he was active. Maturana had introduced pressing into Colombian soccer, his own interpretation of the Dutch approach of “Fordism” (system play that had been ignored in South America).
International football increasingly feels like a different form of game to club matches, less sophisticated, less accurate, less based on complex data and critical schemas, and perhaps less highly valued. It's not the quality, but the result is not attractive. There remains a world where the system no longer controls us, a world where individuals can shine, a world where players can still be heroes, not managers, sporting directors, players or set-piece coaches, a world where Lionel Messi can still be a hero. He fulfilled his destiny by winning the World Cup almost single-handedly.
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Even in the Copa America, Rodriguez didn't function as a typical number 10. He played on the right side, drifting into a more central position behind John Cordoba and Luis Diaz in the infield, with Daniel Muñoz playing wide at right back (until his suspension). (we lost in the final) and three mobile attacking midfielders provided protection. But as with Messi at the World Cup, that was enough.
That's not to say Rodriguez never makes defensive moves. In fact, he recorded nine interceptions and tackles in this competition, nine more than Messi. Rather, Rodriguez cannot be trusted to do so because he is looking for spaces where he can. Exposing the opponent's weaknesses means he cannot always cover the opposition's full-backs as enthusiastically.
His own team will have to compromise for cover, and while that is not impossible at club level, it is much easier to adapt to an unreliable defensive presence in the more basic environments of international football. . This season, Rayo's Rodríguez has recorded a total of four tackles and an interception, fewer than in the Copa America group stage game against Brazil.
But for all non-Colombians, that feeling must be an unfulfilled talent. I'll confess my bias here. At the 2014 World Cup, I was at the Maracanã and 25 yards from goal I hit Alvaro Pereira's header in the chest. I turned and hit a volley. This shot landed under the crossbar, giving Colombia the lead against Uruguay. Of course, all of that is subjective and depends a lot on the exact angle you're looking at it from and your state of mind at the time, but this is probably the best goal I've ever seen live.
Rodriguez was 22 years old and playing for Monaco. He had already won three league titles with Porto, and brought Banfield its only Argentine title (despite the alleged support of Evita Peron, they were unable to fully manage). There was no). He won the Golden Boot award at that World Cup and looked like he was on his way to becoming a genuine world star. He joined Real Madrid at the end of that summer, but was distrusted by Rafa Benítez and then Zinedine Zidane and has never been the same since.
When he joined Everton in 2020, I confess I thought it was a good decision. How could you not want to see a player of such obvious quality? If the club can't win titles, it must at least make it fun. For four or five games, Everton were like that. He scored in the 5-2 win over West Brom and twice in the 4-2 win over Brighton. And then the drifting began. He became an intermittent presence, a source of frustration, and an expensive trinket they could hardly afford. Maybe with a better organized club and a more consistent team around him…but it's a conversation that's been going on for 10 years. He needs to build a team for him and Colombia can do that, but the club side cannot.
And Rodriguez remains a beautiful relic of his youth, and the only hope is that he hangs out for another 18 months and sees him represent Colombia once again on the stage that best suits him: the World Cup.
