Soldado's Race At Spurs Has Run
Just 13 months after arriving with a glowing reputation and £26m fee, Roberto Soldado looks a shell of the striker Spurs bought. Daniel Storey thinks his race has run...
In hindsight, it was probably when Fernando Torres knew that his Stamford Bridge career was over. During Chelsea's Europa League-winning campaign of 2012/13, Torres started every match, but in that three-month period began just five Premier League games. The early stages of this competition have become a close sibling of the League Cup: An arena for the unconvincing, untested or unwanted.
Roberto Soldado must have experienced that very same feeling when making his third start of the season against Besiktas, joining AEL Limassol and Nottingham Forest on an inauspicious list. Spurs may be desperately short of forwards, but Soldado is third in a list of three. The Spaniard last started a Premier League game on March 30.
With Emmanuel Adebayor the first choice to lead the line ever since Tim Sherwood took over in December 2013, Soldado has been forced to contend for substitute minutes with 21-year-old academy graduate Harry Kane. It's a race in which the Spain international is quickly falling further behind.
Against Besiktas, it was Kane rather than Soldado who made his case for domestic consideration. The striker scored the game's opening goal, turning expertly on the edge of the box before firing beyond Tolga Zengin. It was a finish of great confidence - Kane's progression is one of the pleasing points of a stuttering early season for Spurs.
One simply couldn't envisage his strike partner doing something similar. A failure to have a single shot, the fewest touches (29) of any starting outfield player, and the fewest successful passes told the story of Soldado's evening. As predictable as it was disappointing.
Soldado's decline has been extraordinary. He arrived in England with a reputation as a penalty box predator, a striker buoyed by six goals in his previous nine internationals and a realistic contender to be Spain's starting No.9. His 82 goals in three seasons at Valencia put him third behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in Spain's goalscoring list. He's now third again, this time to Adebayor and Kane.
In La Liga, Soldado was a finisher, registering an impressive 4.16 shots per goal during his final league season at the Mestalla. He was idolised by Valencia's supporters for his rambunctious attitude, and nicknamed Gudari at Getafe - the soldier. This was not an all-round forward, but his aggression and movement made up for any shortfall in skill.
The £26m fee Spurs paid appeared expensive, especially considering his age (28), but represented a confidence from the club that Soldado would be a 20-league goal striker - their first since Jurgen Klinsmann. Whilst the signings of Erik Lamela and Paulinho contained obvious risk, Soldado was the no-brainer. Round peg was being placed into round hole.
The player himself was equally confident of success. "To give an exact figure is complicated," Soldado said in August 2013. "My objective is to score more than 20 goals which I think is a good amount. The physical side is harder than in Spain and, because of that, I want to show my commitment to fight for this shirt in the best possible way."
It has been an utter calamity. Soldado has played 1,970 Premier League minutes for Tottenham and has scored two goals from open play. He has taken 51 shots and managed just 17 on target. That shooting accuracy (33%) compares unfavourably to Jermain Defoe (57%), Adebayor (70%) and Kane (71%) over the same period. A conversion rate from open play of just 3.7% marks a startling drop from 20.5% in his previous La Liga season.
Saddest of all is Soldado's current demeanour. Gone is the movement in the box, gone is the boisterous attitude and gone is the apparent desire to seek football's defining glory: The goal. The Gudari now appears unarmed, debilitated by his own fruitless toils.
Soldado's guilt is not without mitigation. At times he has been left worryingly isolated, the under-performance of Erik Lamela, Nacer Chadli and Andros Townsend during the early months of last season leaving the striker painfully short of service when he needed to hit the ground running. A midfield including Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and an in-form Aaron Lennon may have seen a marked shift in Soldado's fortunes.
Soldado has also endured a difficult time off the field, with homesickness not helped by other personal issues. Soldado has been insistent that this has not affected his level of performance, but at such times we must remember that footballers are not robots, suffering life's inevitable pitfalls just like anyone else. Fame or fortune offers nothing in compensation.
Whatever is to blame for the striker's staggering regression, it appears that Soldado's race has run at White Hart Lane. Starting in the Europa League is a difficult habit to shift, with opportunities in the Premier League now rare. With patience at a premium, the suspicion is that Soldado is nursing an empty glass in the last-chance saloon. His career has quickly turned sour, and it may be time to look for the next challenge
DANIEL STOREY
