Jesé Rodriguez: The Latest Addition To Stoke’s Playground For Unfulfilled Wonderkids

Jesé Rodriguez: The Latest Addition To Stoke’s Playground For Unfulfilled Wonderkids
12:22, 21 Aug 2017

There was a time when Jesé Rodriguez was the next big thing at Real Madrid. Thrust into a squad of polished professionals and galácticos, the Las Palmas-born winger did more than plug the gap left by Gareth Bale’s injury in 2014.

Regarded as perhaps the most naturally gifted player to emerge from the club’s youth academy, Jesé’s impressive performances led many to call for his inclusion ahead of Bale.

It ended in heartache. In Real’s Champions League clash with Schalke, Sead Kolasinac – the brawny Bosnian who has popped up at Arsenal – left a mark on the rising star. A particularly robust challenge caused a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He was sidelined for nine months, a lengthy absence which served to hinder his progress.

Jesé, like many players who suffer an injury of that nature, has never been quite the same since. He failed to establish himself in Real’s first-team under Rafael Benitez and Zinedine Zidane, opting to join Paris Saint-Germain for the 2015/16 season.

Unfortunately, it transpired to be a fruitless venture, with Jesé failing to settle in the French capital before being loaned back to his hometown club Las Palmas for the second half of the campaign. Again, expectations were not met following his arrival amid great fanfare. Towards the end of the season the Las Palmas coach Quique Setien said the forward had failed to make an impression.

With erratic form and an inflated sense of self-importance, his loan move to Stoke has to be seen as a risk, yes, and his advent is the latest intriguing addition to the Potters playground for semi-unfulfilled wunderkinds.

Jesé joins Bojan Krkic, Xherdan Shaqiri and Ibrahim Afellay in Stoke’s ‘they never quite made it at the highest level’ ensemble. Bojan, now 26, was once described as a ‘treasure’ by Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard around the time he made his debut for the club, aged just 16 and 26 days. He was their next boy wonder, an exhilarating revelation whose rapid rise through the ranks at the Catalan giants mirrored that of Lionel Messi.

Not unlike Jesé at Madrid, though, Bojan simply couldn’t contend with the world-class quality ahead of him in the pecking order: Messi, Thierry Henry, Samuel Eto’o, Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He made his way to Stoke after loan spells at Roma, AC Milan and Ajax. He has sparkled sporadically, showing flickers of his teenage golden years, but Hughes has grown frustrated at a lack of consistency. He was loaned to Mainz last season and may well be on his way out the door again.

Afellay, once considered the baby-face assassin of European football, is now 31 (believe it or not) and has spent a sizeable chunk of his time in the Premier League on the sidelines. Shaqiri, too, has had his ailments but there has been enough of his penchant for spectacular long-range strikes to believe he will remain a key part of Hughes’s plans.

Jonathan Walters, the ever-dependable warhorse, has moved on to Burnley, and it will be interesting to see if Jesé can fill the Irishman’s muddied boots. His initiation went wonderfully, to his credit, scoring an excellent winner with a beautifully slotted finish to down Arsenal before going off to a standing ovation and earning effusive praise from his manager.

"I think everybody is going to enjoy watching him and that he'll light the Premier League up as the season progresses,” Hughes said.

It’s a bold claim, for sure, especially for a player who is yet to fully convince the watching world that he can become the devastating attacker who was once likened to Raul. He certainly has a long way to go. Football fans have exceptionally short-term memories. Their patience will be tested by Jesé.

He is not the model of industry and professionalism that Walters was and, if he begins to show signs of inconsistency, Stoke supporters can be excused for questioning their club’s transfer policy, which continues to centre on giving wilting wunderkinds another shot at glory, more in hope than in expectation.

It’s admirable that Hughes continues to cling on to this reverie of Stoke as a voguish outfit, punctuated with streaky yet naturally gifted technicians, but he can’t afford a flop from his latest project, the Jesé reboot.

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