Taking heed of an agent’s whinges is not something anyone associated with football is inclined to do. Especially not an agent who has leeched as much money out of the game as this one. Yet when Jorge Mendes this week asked a question of one of his clients it was hard not to wonder whether he had a point. What, the Portuguese wheeler dealer wanted to know, is going on exactly with Radamel Falcao at Manchester United?
“One of the very best in the world,” Mendes claimed of the Colombian, “who would without doubt play 90 minutes of the match, every time, with any other club.” Yet there he was on Saturday, as Manchester United laboured against Southampton, not even picked for the matchday squad, not there to come off the bench when his team needed the one currency in which he is singularly over-endowed: goals. How much more likely would his team have been to find an equaliser, it might be thought, were it Falcao who came off the bench rather than Marouane Fallaini?
But Falcao was not available. He was, apparently, rested. Though given that he has started only started seven Premier League games this season, exhaustion hardly seems a likely diagnosis. So what is going on here? Why is a player once regarded as the finest emerging talent in the game apparently not being given a proper opportunity? Is Mendes right and Louis van Gaal wrong? Are United uniquely blind to the player’s prowess?
Mendes is a figure who holds much sway around Old Trafford. He is, after all, the agent who brought Cristiano Ronaldo to Manchester and who has it in his power to fulfil the wilder dreams of the supporters by bringing him back. He is also responsible for the business dealings of United’s most important player this season, David De Gea, the goalkeeper who has yet to agree terms for a new contract. That he was also the man who supplied the club with Anderson and Bebe is less often celebrated. But never mind, what he says has significance.
And in the modern way of the transfer market, it is more than probable that Mendes’s influence at the club is the reason why Falcao arrived at Old Trafford in the first place. Badly injured playing for Monaco back in January, Falcao had missed out on the grand opportunity provided by the World Cup to demonstrate his ability to the biggest employers. It was left to his international team mate James Rodriguez – by no coincidence another Mendes client – to show how an eye-catching performance in that competition can enhance a player’s status.
After scoring what this week was voted international goal of the season for Colombia against Uruguay in the last 16 of the World Cup, Rodriguez was on his way to Madrid. Falcao, meanwhile, was making his first tentative steps back from cruciate ligament damage.
Without the kind of fanfare Rodriguez made, Falcao needed some strings pulling to get the big money move his agent wanted for him. Mendes undoubtedly used his stock at United to engineer a loan deal. Van Gaal, seeking to make his mark at the club, would not have been remotely averse to the idea – when it was put to him by the agent - of taking a lengthy look at a player of Falcao’s standing.
The problem appears to have come when the Colombian arrived in Manchester and Van Gaal began to study his form on the training field and take a close look at the analysis compiled by the medical department. There was certainly nothing wrong with Falcao’s attitude. This is a player who, as his ecstatic celebration on each of the three occasions he has scored for United indicates, enjoys his football and wants to succeed. Rather the doubts are about his fitness. More particularly what the injury did to his game.
Falcao is a predatory forward. He is not someone like Eric Cantona who provided as many assists as he scored goals. His strength is not holding up play or bringing others into the game. He is a finisher, someone who arrives in the right place at the right time to convert chances. And that requires a type of speed. Not necessarily sprinting pace across 100 metres. But a short distance bullet-like agility.
Van Gaal clearly does not believe that Falcao has yet recovered that sort of fitness. Otherwise the player would be in the starting line-up as Mendes suggests. Despite the suspicion many a United follower might have about why the names Jones and Smalling keep appearing on his team sheets, Van Gaal is way too shrewd an operator not to select the best available to him.
If Falcao is not yet up to speed, the unspoken question here is whether he ever will recover what was once his trademark goalscoring touch. It never returned to Michael Owen after he suffered a similar kind of injury. True, he made the odd telling goal-scoring contribution – not least for Manchester United - but Owen was never the same player after rupturing his cruciate.
If Van Gaal fears the same may be true of Falcao, you can understand his reluctance to commit his club to someone whose permanent signing would cost way more than buying in potential like that offered by – to pluck a name at random - Saido Berahino.
Which may be why Mendes has been moved to make noises. He needs to get his player in the shop window before the rumours of his demise become common currency. By suggesting Van Gaal is doing something illogical – rather than entirely precautionary - he doubtless hopes to rouse the United supporters into a campaign to have Falcao selected. And how they would love to see the Falcao of old, the one who scored 52 goals in 68 appearances for Atletico Madrid finishing off moves started by Angel Di Maria, Wayne Rooney and Juan Mata.
Although, for reasons of tact and diplomacy he cannot voice such suspicion publicly, the doubt in Van Gaal’s mind must be whether he can ever be that player again.
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