IT’S WRONG TO LABEL MADRID HERO JOSELU A POTTERS FLOP...
IT is doing a disservice to Joselu that pundits and people who should know better keep drawing their own conclusions about his time at Stoke City.
The 34-year-old’s journey to the Champions League final with Real Madrid is a brilliant story of a striker living an unexpected dream. But it’s wrong that he’s been labelled as a Stoke flop or a Stoke reject.
He wasn’t a key figure in his season with the first team, but there’s a long way between that and being a disaster.
He was a useful addition to a strong squad and, like at Real Madrid and with Spain, he showed he could make an impact from the bench during his time in the Premier League.
He was a good finisher then as now and played his part as Stoke finished ninth and reached the League Cup semi-final.
There were good goals, in a thrilling 4-3 win at Everton, in a 3-1 win over Alex Neil’s Norwich and wins away at Watford and Bournemouth – and he featured in 22 out of 38 league games, although only 10 from the start, and it was fair enough that he wanted more game time.
It is another story entirely that Stoke tried to replace him with Saido Berahion and then landed Wilfried Bony.
Bony was given up as finished by the time they landed Berahino the following January and it wasn’t long before the same conclusion was reached on Berahino too.
Joselu went on loan to Deportivo and came back for pre-season in 2017, impressing with clever runs and some fiercely-taken goals, including two beauties at St Pauli in Hamburg.
It was put to Mark Hughes that he might not quite be aggressive enough elbow-pointing kind of striker to really lead the line in England but Hughes wasn’t really buying that, telling The Sentinel: “He’s a certain type of striker. He’s clearly not the kind of guy who is going to be battering around and throwing elbows into defenders. But he’s an intelligent forward, a clever player who makes good runs. He can pick little pockets of space and he understands if he gets in there then he’s a good finisher. He strikes a ball very cleanly, as any technical player would do.”
Nevertheless, Joselu’s sale was sanctioned, for £5m to Newcastle United, and it would be another step in his long journey to Wembley and a date with destiny against Borussia Dortmund on June 1.
He was third top scorer in La Liga last season as Espanyol were relegated – and made an instant impression as a super sub for Spain along the way – and joined Real on loan for this term. No-one quite knows what will happen next.
In his place at Stoke came Jese Rodriguez, who had won the Champions League with Real Madrid in 2014 and 2016, and Maxim Choupo-moting, who came off the bench for Bayern Munich four minutes after Joselu had come on for Madrid on Wednesday evening at the Bernabeu. But that’s two more other stories.
Joselu did look back at his time in Stoke recently in a heart-warming interview with the Guardian’s Spanish football expert Sid Lowe.
He said: “That was a good year: we finished ninth, beat City and United and reached the [League] Cup semi-final, only losing on penalties at Anfield … I played with good footballers: Crouch, [Marko] Arnautovic, Jonny Walters...
He added: “I loved Jonny Walters. He fought, he was committed, physically he was a beast, he scored over a hundred goals. Crouch was an incredible guy. Jude calls me Crouchy now because I’m a tall striker who likes a cross. Others followed Jude and it’s stuck. But he’s 2 metres tall, I’m only 1.92. Crouch was very funny and helped me a lot.
“It was hard [to leave] because I had got to know everyone there but they were looking for a shift in style. I still follow Stoke. They just can’t quite get back to the Premier League. The players have gone but I have loads of friends there. I had people from Stoke at my wedding, people from Newcastle too.”
There might be a few people from Stoke and Newcastle calling him up now hoping for Champions League final tickets.