admin
LONDON — Around this time every year, the English Premier League releases the list of players who have been given free transfers by their clubs at the end of the season.
What makes this so peculiarly dissonant is that by and large, these transactions take place with a bare minimum of fuss and zero ceremony.
The lavish farewells afforded to the likes of Steven Gerrard and Didier Drogba are enjoyed only by a very fortunate few. Where’s the hour-long Radio 5Live tribute to Brede Hangeland? Where’s Youssouf Mulumbu’s guard of honour? Where’s Maynor Figueroa’s carriage clock?
Plenty of released players end up picking up deals elsewhere — Carlton Cole will doubtless still be “training with West Ham” when he’s in his mid-40s — but for many, it is a bitterly poignant moment; a chance to wonder what might have been.
And with few players is this more true than with Abou Diaby, who appears to leaving Arsenal this summer after a nine-year career that remained right to its very end full of intrigue and promise and potential, blind faith and blind hope and ultimately underachievement.
In many ways, Diaby is the player who best sums up the last nine years at Arsenal, which is a strange thing to say because he was there for so little of it.
He missed the 2006 Champions League final after a career-threatening tackle by Sunderland’s Dan Smth, was left out of the 2011 League Cup final defeat to Birmingham, missed the last two FA Cup wins with injury. — The Daily Telegraph.
Online Reporter