STOKE’S NEW SIGNING… A RAPPER ONCE RATED REAL MADRID’S NEXT BIG THING (WITH A VERY GLAMOROUS GIRLFRIEND)
STOKE City may not be the Premier League’s most glamorous outpost but they have taken Paris Saint-Germain forward Jesé Rodriguez – twice a Champions League winner at Real Madrid – on loan for the rest of the season. Stoke chief executive Toby Scholes says the 24-year-old Spaniard is “hungry to make a big impression in the Premier League”.
Jesé is one of the best strikers to come out of Real Madrid’s youth academy since Raúl. If he doesn’t want that to be the extent of his footballing achievements, he needs to turn the corner in a career that has been drifting for two years. Mark Hughes and Stoke might be just the combination that saves him.
This time last year, wasn’t Jese the Neymar of his day?
Paris Saint-Germain paid €21 million (R327m) for him last August and the Parisians were very excited about the prospect of a former Real Madrid player joining them. Little did they know what would come 12 months later.
So he didn’t really deliver?
His presentation went well enough. His girlfriend Aurah Ruiz took centre stage at the Parc des Princes unveiling. The images of the couple, along with the video of the rap single Yo Sabia that he had recorded under the alias Jey M, made the headlines, but when the glitz and glamour faded, the goals never really came in the first half of a very disappointing season.
All his own fault or mitigating circumstances?
PSG boss Unai Emery can be a difficult coach to get along with and he had his own problems adjusting to life in Ligue 1. There was early friction between the two, with the player feeling that as the big summer signing he should have been treated a little better. If being giving a star-spangled welcome in Paris swelled his ego, he will have been humbled by the subsequent loan move to Spanish mid-table side Las Palmas, so he will perhaps arrive a more level-headed individual at Stoke.
What went on at Las Palmas?
He was returning to his hometown club. There was an over-eagerness to please on the pitch at the start and he had to endure a disastrous debut, missing an open goal in the defeat by lowly Granada by actually turning a perfect cross away from goal instead of passing it into an empty net. Things improved, but not by much and he finished up with three goals in 16 games. Las Palmas were never going to have the money to keep him on loan for another season anyway.
Another bad move then?
Las Palmas don’t aspire to much more than mid-table safety and the club had already obtained that before he played his first game. Coach Quique Setién didn’t really want another forward. He felt it was the defence that needed sorting out. He was also in a contract dispute with the club and poised to leave. All in all it wasn’t the greatest environment for Jesé to get back to his best.
When he was at his best, just how good was he?
He shone for Spain right from Under-16 level, going on to win the Under-19 European Championship in 2012, finishing as top scorer. He was outstanding in Real Madrid’s youth team too, first coming through as a winger but then scoring a record 22 league goals for the B team at a time when they were playing in Spain’s highly competitive second division. Despite having Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale ahead of him in the first team he managed, against all the odds, to break through under Carlo Ancelotti in 2013-14. There were even calls for his inclusion in Vicente del Bosque’s Spain squad for the 2014 World Cup. However, he is yet to win a cap for the senior national team.
What went wrong?
On March 18, 2014, in the last-16 Champions League game against Schalke, he tore cruciate ligaments in his right knee and had to kiss goodbye to his World Cup dream and eight months of football. If he makes his debut he will come up against the player who was involved in his awful injury, Arsenal’s new signing Sead Kolasinac.
Bad injury, bad timing…
He was out for 258 days but his head never dropped and he was welcomed back by a Real Madrid dressing room who had nicknamed him “Bichito”, a version of “Bicho”, Ronaldo’s moniker, meaning “bug” but suggesting something more along the lines of “force of nature”. He showed he had got over the injury when Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane picked him for a Champions League game against Roma in the Olympic Stadium. He scored and gave full back Lucas Digne (now of Barcelona) a torrid time. But the competition was tougher than ever at Madrid and PSG seemed like a good idea when they came calling last year.
Where will he play for Stoke? And what should we call him?
In a three-pronged attack, he would play as a wide forward. And because Rodriguez is as common as Smith in Spain he has always answered to Jesé. That’s “Hessay” not “Jessie”. Stoke supporters will come up with something.
Should Stoke be positive?
He’s got genuine talent and with Hughes coaching him he can become a much more complete forward. The Stoke fans will no doubt get behind him and stick with him in a way that he will not have experienced in France or Spain. It’s easy to dismiss him as an airhead busy wasting his talent. But behind the videos and girlfriend he has shown that as well as being a character, he does also have character. If he came back from a career-threatening injury then he can come back from some bad career choices. And if he concentrates solely on his football then linking up with Hughes could be the making of him. If things go well, we could see Peter Crouch in Jesé’s next video. – Daily Mail