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 Jese — 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’.
JeSe RODRIGUeZ is one of the best strikers to come out of Real Madrid’s youth academy since Raul. 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 the last two years. Mark Hughes and Stoke might be just the combination that saves him. Paris Saint- Germain paid €21m (£19.1m) 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. 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 the 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 feelingg that as the big summer signgning he should have been n treated a little better. If being giving a starspangled welcome in Paris swelled his ego he will have been humbled by the subsequent loan move to Spanish mid-table sidee Las Palmas, so he will perhaps arrive a more level-levelheaded 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 Setien 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 Jese 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. 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 on Saturday 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 ththe lines of ‘ force of naturnature’. He showed he had got over the injury when RReal Madrid coach Zineedine Zidane picked hhim for a Champions League game against Roma in the Olympic Stadium. He scored aand gave full back LLucas Digne (now of BaBarcelona) a torrid time. But the competition was toughertoughe 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 Jese. That’s ‘Hessay’ not ‘Jessie’. Stoke supporters will come up with something.
Should Stoke be positive?
He’s got genuine talent and with Mark 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 rap videos and glamorous girlfriend he has shown that as well as being a character, he does also have character. If he came back from a careerthreatening 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 Jese’s next video.