A decade ago, Real Madrid made two signings in the space of five days on the back of the 2014 World Cup finals. One was described as a galactico, and the other was Toni Kroos.
When Kroos announced this month that he would be retiring in the summer, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez described him as one of the greatest players in the club’s history. Signed for £19.75million ($25.2m) from Bayern Munich, Kroos spent 10 years at Real Madrid, made 464 appearances and won 21 (potentially 22) trophies. “This club is, and will always be, his home,” Perez said.
At the same time, on the other side of the world in Brazil, another club president was talking about the galactico who joined Real Madrid alongside Kroos and cost more than three times as much (£61million).
“It’s increasingly clear that he’s not in the coach’s plans,” Julio Casares, at Sao Paulo, said. “Now he’s going to play at the Copa America. The window will determine James’ future. We don’t have any offers. His exit has to be good for the player and principally for the club.”
Rodriguez and Kroos signed for Real Madrid in 2014 (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)
Casares was speaking about James Rodriguez, the poster boy of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the Golden Boot winner at that tournament, the scorer of the best goal, and a player Real Madrid felt compelled to sign from Monaco that summer, even if there was no discernible plan for how the Colombian would be used at the Bernabeu.
“I do not know how James plays. But he had a great World Cup and we wanted him here,” Perez said in response to a question about the coach Carlo Ancelotti’s 4-3-3 formation and whether Rodriguez, a natural No 10, would be as good a fit as the departing Angel Di Maria.
It turned out that Rodriguez was never really a good fit at Real Madrid full stop. There are two Champions League trophies next to his name, but the small print shows that he didn’t feature in either final. As for his La Liga titles, Rodriguez started 13 league games in 2016-17 and five in 2019-20.
He produced moments of brilliance at Real Madrid, for sure, particularly during his first and only season under Ancelotti, but not nearly enough for a player of his profile and that, in truth, is the story of Rodriguez’s club career over the past 10 years.
At best, Rodriguez has drifted. At worst, he has looked totally lost. The last three seasons have been curious, to say the least — spent in Qatar, Greece and Brazil, where he has been out of sight and out of mind for most football fans.
At Al Rayyan, Rodriguez didn’t like being told that he had to use his hands to eat. At Olympiacos, he accused the club of not treating him seriously. At Sao Paulo, Rodriguez complained about how hard the players tackled in Brazilian football.
A few years earlier, at Bayern, where Rodriguez spent two seasons on loan and won back-to-back Bundesliga titles, the weather was a problem. “There were days when I would go to work at nine o’clock, start the car and check the temperature: -28C (-18.4F). I was wondering, ‘What am I doing here with this cold?’.”
Rodriguez struggled with the weather in Munich (Adam Pretty/Bongarts/Getty Images)
As for Everton, Rodriguez admitted he signed for the manager rather than the club – something that was always going to be a problem when the manager moved on. “I go to Everton, practically because Ancelotti was there, and look, now Carlo is gone,” he said when the Italian returned to Madrid in 2021.
All of which makes you wonder where Rodriguez will end up next. Or, more to the point, who is going to sign him, bearing in mind his salary, his decreasing output on the pitch against a backdrop of injuries — a total of 12 goals for Al Rayyan, Olympiacos and Sao Paulo — and, rightly or wrongly, the growing impression that the fresh-faced playmaker who lit up the 2014 World Cup with that volley against Uruguay, not to mention his smile, has lost some of his hunger and motivation for the game.
🇨🇴🎩 Each angle better than the last @FCFSeleccionCol | @jamesdrodriguez | #WorldCup pic.twitter.com/QbTJcibIr9
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) February 23, 2022
“Last dance?” Rodriguez posted on Instagram this month in reply to an Everton fan, joking about the possibility of a return to Goodison Park.
On the face of it, the Copa America is a more likely place for a footballing swansong or, to borrow Rodriguez’s expression, a ‘last dance‘, even if there is no suggestion that the 32-year-old (he turns 33 two days before the final in Miami in July) is planning to hang his boots up anytime soon.
Colombia are on a fantastic run of form, fuelling hopes in that corner of South America that Nestor Lorenzo and his players can deliver something special in the United States.
How to follow Euro 2024 and Copa America on The Athletic…
Unbeaten in 21 matches, Colombia have defeated Germany, Spain and Brazil during the last two years, and Rodriguez, despite all his trials and tribulations at club level, has more than played his part, especially recently.
“James Rodriguez. He was the one who made the difference,” Luis de la Fuente, Spain’s coach, ruefully reflected in March.
Colombia beat Spain 1-0 in London and the introduction of Rodriguez at the interval was pivotal for a team that has developed an uncanny knack for turning it on in the second half of matches. Rodriguez’s lovely left-footed pass from deep set Luis Diaz free for a glorious counter-attacking goal that ended with Daniel Munoz spectacularly, and acrobatically, hooking home.
(Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)
“We all know what he (Rodriguez) has to offer, it does not surprise me,” Lorenzo said afterwards. “This national team makes him feel a special kind of way. Everybody in Colombia knows that.”
The head coach’s faith in Rodriguez has been repaid. At the back end of last year, Rodriguez started each of Colombia’s last four World Cup qualifiers, scoring in a 2-2 draw at home against Uruguay and setting up the winner for Diaz in December’s landmark and emotional — kidnappers had just released the Liverpool winger’s father — victory over Brazil in Barranquilla.
The passion in Rodriguez’s celebration after his goal against Uruguay said everything about what playing for Colombia means to him. A complex character in so many ways, Rodriguez is straight down the line when it comes to representing his country: he can’t get enough of it and is now only two appearances away from winning his 100th cap.
Absences hurt him. When he was left out of the Colombia squad for the last Copa America, in 2021, after a season in the Premier League with Everton that started brightly but fizzled out amid too many injuries, Rodriguez sounded crestfallen.
“Not receiving the trust from the coaching staff breaks everything and causes me enormous pain, since I have always left even my life for the Colombia jersey,” he said.
In May last year, Rodriguez, who has rarely given interviews over the last decade (some would say that his stutter is part of the reason for that; others would point to a difficult relationship with the media that included raising a middle finger in their direction in 2017), sat down for more than an hour with Win Sports, one of the leading broadcasters in Colombia, essentially to stress how much he wanted to be involved in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.
At this stage of his career, it feels as though Rodriguez is an international footballer first and a club footballer second, much like the relationship that Gareth Bale, his former Real Madrid team-mate, developed with Wales over time.
Rodriguez and Bale at Real Madrid (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
The obvious problem with that — and this was the case with Bale by the end — is a lack of match fitness when the international fixtures come around.
Rodriguez has played only 265 minutes for Sao Paulo since the turn of the year, making fewer appearances for his club side than 38-year-old Radamel Falcao at La Liga’s Rayo Vallecano, prompting some in Colombia to question Lorenzo’s decision to include him.
“Under Lorenzo, it’s James and 10 others,” Carlos Antonio Velez, one of the country’s leading sports journalists, said in a video posted on social media after the Copa America squad was announced last week (Falcao, for the record, never made the cut, which was not a surprise).
In the eyes of Lorenzo, who knows Rodriguez well after serving as assistant to the former Colombia coach Jose Pekerman for six years, a cameo has the potential to change a game.
“There are players that in 20 minutes give you more than anyone else,” Lorenzo said about Rodriguez in 2022, shortly after taking charge.
Critics questioned Rodriguez’s selection back then for similar reasons to now: his lack of competitive football at club level. On top of that, Colombia were still reeling from their failure to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar, a source of embarrassment for a football-mad country with the second-biggest population in South America.
Rodriguez did not cover himself in glory during that qualification campaign amid rumours of his part in dressing-room splits and arguments — something he strongly denied — and also the team’s dismal run of form, which included a chastening 6-1 defeat against Ecuador that led to him spending 12 months in international exile.
But that was then and this is now. Colombia are back and so is the mercurial No 10 who has provided millions of supporters in the country with their greatest footballing memories.
Rodriguez was one of the stars of the 2014 World Cup (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images)
“James is still a real hero to many people here,” Carlos Valdes, the former Colombia international who played alongside Rodriguez at the 2014 World Cup, tells The Athletic.
“It’s no secret that some people have felt disappointed because they expected more from him. But those of us who know him personally know how much work he puts in. We know what he’s been through with injuries. That made it hard for him to keep playing in the very best leagues, at the top clubs in the world.
“But he’s still one of Colombia’s most important players, there’s no doubt about that.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: John Bradford)
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