The changing Mr. Jones
By Garth Wattley (T&T Express) Looking through my video archives these last few weeks, I saw time fly before me. On one tape, Zinedine Zidane has nearly a full head of hair and playing in the colours of Bourdeaux, on another, he is fitted in the black stripes of Juventus and then on yet another, he is the bald maestro of Real Madrid, passing the ball to a Luiz Figo who I had just seen wearing the blue and red of Barcelona.
Patrice Evra, who seems to be wearing the red of Manchester United forever, was on one of those tapes too. But this was a younger man, less filled out and wearing the red and white strip of the French club Monaco as they got to the 2004 Champions League final. And then there was Ronaldo, the original one, slim, speedy, wondrous with the ball at his feet, and winning a Cup Winners Cup for Barca.
There was an assortment of others who I saw—Roberto Donadoni, Didier Deschamps, Frank Rijkaard, Antonio Conte, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfranco Zola—all of them now men on the sidelines, coaching clubs and countries. But just yesterday, they were the stars of the game, the ones winning and losing the titles.
The footage was a reminder of how quickly life can change on us and how fluid the modern game has become, the top players spanning the range of the top clubs of Europe in a matter of years. The career of the modern-day player is like one of those school bags with numerous compartments, each section representing a spell with a different club.
If you looked into just one “compartment,” it would be difficult to appreciate the whole package—the full value of a player’s career. For example, studying the periods that Patrick Vieira and Rivaldo spent at AC Milan, would not at all give you a full appreciation of the players they were. You would have had to see them at Arsenal, in the case of Vieira, and Barcelona in the case of Rivaldo to get the real story.
Glimpsing Kenwyne Jones playing for the Soca Warriors this year, one also gets the sense that he too is moving into a different compartment, another phase of his career.
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