Sakho’s back
Until his campaign was abruptly hijacked by Sutton United goalkeeper Wayne Shaw earlier this month, Mamadou Sakho was well on his way to completing the strangest year in soccer.
In the past 12 months, Sakho has (1) failed a drug test, (2) admitted to taking a banned substance, (3) asked UEFA to be banned, (4) been banned by UEFA, (5) protested his ban by UEFA and (6) been cleared of any wrongdoing by UEFA. He followed that up by getting in a beef with his manager, Jurgen Klopp, which came to a head when he interrupted Klopp during an interview on Liverpool’s preseason tour of the US — an interview taking place at, you guessed it, Alcatraz Island — from which he was later sent home.
The Frenchman, who was a regular starter under Klopp last season, was told he had no future at the club, and decided to stay and fight for a place anyway. After nearly leaving at the end of the summer transfer window, he spent the first half of the season playing in the reserves, and finally left on loan for Crystal Palace at the end of January, having not played a competitive senior match since his initial ban.
I may be missing some of the finer details here, but I think the coarser ones get the point across just fine: Mamadou Sakho has had a monumentally bizarre 12 months. It has now — finally, mercifully — come to an end, as all arbitrarily assigned 12 month intervals must.
Sakho made his (possibly not) long-awaited debut for Palace on Saturday and was, predictably, very good. Granted, the Eagles were playing Middlesbrough, whose attack is the worst in the league by a comfortable margin, but even so, Palace are not a team in a position to take defensive solidity lightly, regardless of the opposition.
The question for Sakho now is whether or not he can get his career back on track, and indeed what track that might be. Having just turned 27, he should be entering the prime of his career, but for a man who once captained PSG at the age of 17, and who looked like he would be a key player for Klopp at Liverpool — a team notably short of center-backs who aren’t also injured/Lucas Leiva — there must be some degree of disappointment knowing that his current career status is “battling relegation with Sam Allardyce.”
And indeed Crystal Palace must be an unnerving team to play for if you’re on the sort of downward career trajectory Sakho is. Everywhere you look there are players once described as “good” and “exciting.” There is also Andros Townsend.
But Sakho, as I will die insisting, is better than this. Sakho’s good, really good, a fact which has often been ignored, or disputed, because he looks when he plays as if he’s also riding an invisible mechanical bull. This seems to confuse people — it makes the good things he does feel like accidents and the bad things he does feel like other, worse accidents.
But I promise you this is purely an aesthetic thing (although probably not a deliberately aesthetic thing), and that when you learn to watch what Sakho does, instead of how he does it, you will see a really wonderful player (although, also, learning to love how Sakho does it is a fundamental part of the wonder).
Given a consistent starting role, which he will presumably get at Palace, Sakho will be somewhere between good and excellent, just as he always was when given a consistent starting role at Liverpool. Will it be enough, though? Will anybody pay attention, or will Sakho get locked into the same Allardyce tractor beam that seems to have waylaid Patrick van Aanholt’s formerly interesting career?
In some ways, Sakho probably isn’t an ideal Allardyce player. Or at least the coolest things about him are his composure on the ball, his occasional free-form dribbling exhibitions and his excellent range of passing — skills you’d think he’s unlikely to use much for a Palace side in the bottom six of the league in passes per game.
Then again, Sakho’s prone to doing whatever he wants, and this trait seems already to have endeared himself to Allardyce. “His experience and composure made him look very commanding,” he said, per FourFourTwo. “I wasn’t sure if he’d last the whole game but he did and we needed him because he set so many attacks up for us, particularly in the first half when instead of clearing it he gave it to the midfield lads.”
While this quote makes me wonder whether Big Sam gives his players literally any instructions before a match, it’s also a reminder that for all his pragmatism, he’s always been willing to embrace a player’s individuality. And Sakho truly is one of a kind. The early signs, then, are very promising for the defender’s prospects at Palace. But he’s contracted there for only three months.
Sakho is still a Liverpool player and he will return to Anfield in the summer, when one of three things will happen: (a) Klopp, possibly disheartened by the Reds’ defensive frailties, will let bygones be bygones and welcome him back, (b) he’ll be sold or (c) he’ll refuse to be sold (again), get sent back to the reserves and waste another year of his prime.
It would be nice to think (c) isn’t an option, but it was nice to think that last summer, too. Either way, this is an major cross roads for Sakho. His individual story may be subsumed in the larger story of Palace’s battle against relegation, and for that matter Liverpool’s battle for the top four, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
One of the Premier League’s best center-backs (I will die insisting this) may very well leave the Premier League having never managed a full season as a starter. Sakho wouldn’t be the first player to have his career derailed by off-field issues, but he might be the first player to have his career derailed by off-field issues this ridiculous.
But give Sakho a chance, and he will play well. Give Sakho a chance. Please.
Weekly Awards
The Alan Shearer Award for Hat-tricks: Harry Kane
Harry Kane scored another hat-trick on Sunday, against Stoke, to bring his career total up to four, level with such Premier League royalty as Les Ferdinand, Matt Le Tissier and Yakubu “Feed the Yak and he will score” Aiyegbeni. The list of Premier League hat-tricks Wikipedia page is a fascinating document, from which you will learn such diverse facts as these: Eric Cantona scored the first ever Premier League hat-trick for Leeds in a 5-0 win against Tottenham in 1992; Cristiano Ronaldo, improbably, scored zero league hat-tricks for Manchester United; and Afonso Alves scored his only (obviously) Premier League hat-trick in an 8-1 win against Manchester City in May of 2008. You’ll also learn that Kane is well on pace, at the age of only 23, to make a run at Alan Shearer’s record of 11.
The Neil Warnock Award for It’s Officially Time To Worry: Bournemouth
Bournemouth lost 2-1 to West Brom on Saturday to take their league record in 2017 to six losses and a draw in seven matches. They are now firmly in the relegation battle, five points clear of the drop in 14th place, but trending very definitely in the wrong direction. The Cherries have been an easy team to like since getting promoted ahead of last season. In that time, Eddie Howe has become the de facto Next Big Thing in English soccer management, while guiding a side of very limited means to what until recently looked like an established place in the top flight, and all with an exciting, attacking brand of passing soccer. Bournemouth’s dirty not-so-secret these past two seasons has been a horrible defense — they’ve conceded the second most goals in the league so far this season, after conceding the joint second most last season. There’s no shame in losing away to West Brom, but after surrendering an early lead, familiar, and now much more urgent, questions must be asked of that Cherries defense. They’ve conceded two or more goals eight games in a row, and in 10 of their last 11.
The Nacer Chadli Award for Best Miss: Michail Antonio
Watford played West Ham on Saturday in a match that could scarcely have been more pointless if Manchester United played it against Thailand XI in early July. And yet here we are in late February, watching Walter Mazzarri and Slaven Bilic try to frown one another to death. The only light in an otherwise meaningless darkness was West Ham’s equalizing goal, scored after Michail Antonio drilled a low shot past Heurelho Gomes that hit one post, then the other, before bouncing conveniently into the path of Andre Ayew at the top of the 6-yard box. I’ve long dreamed of seeing a player deliberately use the woodwork to pass to a teammate, and after years of disappointment, this finally felt like a step in the right direction.
The Tony Pulis Award for Baby Steps: Burnley
Burnley won their second away point of the season on Saturday, against Hull, in their 12th away match. The Clarets’ struggles away from Turf Moor this season have been both severe and irrelevant, thanks to their exceptional home form, but with their mid-table status secured, they still have pride to play for. The 1-1 draw saw Sean Dyche’s side score their sixth away goal of the season, to move their points and goals per away game up to 0.17 and 0.5, respectively, from 0.09 and 0.46, also respectively. The search for their first away win of the season, however, continues.
The Erwin Schrodinger Award for Betrayal: Leicester
Leicester sacked Claudio Ranieri last Thursday less than a year after he guided them to the most unlikely title win in the history of the sport. The decision was met with much outcry, especially after reports emerged suggesting the Foxes players had turned against their hitherto fearless leader, and ultimately forced him out the door. They then put in arguably their best performance of the season, dominating Liverpool in a 3-1 win at the King Power on Monday night. The question is what this proves. Did the players turn on Ranieri or not? Was their performance confirmation of their betrayal, or a tribute to their fallen manager? Both, it seems, are equally motivating.