Falcao eyes resurrection

Football: After a major knee injury, the Colombian striker looks to reinvent his game with new club Chelsea

As the Copa America came to an end in Chile, a man who had left it without showing a trace of his usual skills was contemplating another generous opportunity to resurrect his broken career.

Radamel Falcao, the Colombian known as “El Tigre,” scored no goals and played just one full game during the tournament. Sadly, he looked as he did throughout last season while on loan at Manchester United -- a shadow of the predator that he once was.

At 29, it is not age that diminishes Falcao. It is his lack of confidence and spontaneity after a major injury. He is paying the price, still, for suffering soccer’s most feared injury, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in the knee.

Once he was as quick as a big cat -- hence the nickname. Too quick, in fact, for Soner Ertek, a part-time pro player who mistimed a tackle on Falcao when the Colombian was playing in the French Cup for Monaco in January 2014.

The ligament was reconstructed as soundly as surgery could make it. Maybe it was a mistake for Falcao to attempt, and fail, to get back in time for the World Cup, six months after the injury. And, in retrospect, his attempt to move on loan to England’s Premier League, which is among the most fierce and physical on earth, was also a gamble taken too soon.

Last September, United offered Falcao a salary reported to be worth 265,000 British pounds a week, or about $21 million a year, and paid Monaco about $15 million to give the Colombian what amounted to a one-year trial. He made 29 appearances, most of them tentative and brief, and scored just four times.

Manchester did not exercise its option to hire the Colombian permanently.
As the year went on, Falcao appeared to be in limbo. The harder he tried, the more he failed to impress. The more the pressure mounted upon him, the less he resembled the brave and free-spirited striker of previous seasons.

His Portuguese agent, Jorge Mendes, blamed Manchester United and said that if his client was not wanted at Old Trafford next season, then he would play at one of the best clubs in the world.

Really? Who would take the chance? Who might throw more money at an apparently depreciating asset?

The rumour grew that Falcao’s next destination was Chelsea. The inside story is that Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is also represented by Mendes, and that Mendes is the mysterious third-party owner of 60 percent of the commercial rights of the Colombian player.

Sure enough, the deal was done.
Falcao took a salary cut to join Chelsea. He will apparently receive about half of what he made with United -- and once again, the contract is intended to last for one year, with Monaco happy to accept another fee for a permanent deal if all parties agree at the end of the season.

Falcao is credited with 200 goals in 305 games for clubs in Argentina, Portugal, Spain and France before he scored those four goals in 29 appearances last season with United.
The son of a Colombian defender, Falcao made his professional debut in 1999 at the ridiculously early age of 13 with the second-tier Colombian club Lanceros Boyacá, then was sold to River Plate in Argentina when he was 15.

His precocity, flair and ability to make the hardest thing in soccer -- goal scoring -- look easy attracted scouts to him like moths to a flame.

What did he have, and what do clubs still see in him? Attributes that you cannot teach a player. He smells goals that others fail to sense. For River Plate in Argentina, Falcao struck 45 times in 105 games. At Porto his numbers were 72 goals in 87 appearances. At Atlético Madrid, his return was 70 goals in 91 matches.

Few of them were ordinary, and many were spectacular. Falcao is right-footed, but he can finish with either foot and or with his head. One of his most impressive hat tricks was for Atlético against Chelsea in the UEFA Super Cup in 2012.

Each goal came from the left foot. Each was a different brush stroke of deft invention made at a searing speed as he darted between the Chelsea defenders on the left, on the right and through the middle.

The first was chipped over the head of goalkeeper Petr Cech, glancing off the far post. The second, from the other side of the penalty area, floated beneath the bar. The third was drilled low inside the opposite post.

Each strike used different parts of the foot, as he caressed rather than forced the ball. That talent is born, not taught, and it comes as naturally to a pure striker as flight does to a bird.

But then, with that one tackle in early 2014, the bird was left with a broken wing.
Falcao had torn a ligament in his right knee once before, but this time the injury was to his left knee. He recovered after the first. It is now over 18 months since his second injury.


Maybe Mourinho will be the one to restore the Colombian. Maybe it is a timely gamble, as most transfers are, and Chelsea will reap the benefit of Falcao’s finally adjusting to the intensely physical style of Premier League soccer after struggling to do so in Manchester.
He joins three other former Atletico players at Chelsea: goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, defender Filipe Luís, and striker Diego Costa.

Falcao and Costa played as a pair in Madrid, where Falcao was the lead player and Costa the support runner. Now, Costa is the established star, and Falcao must adapt as a colleague, a rival or as an alternative from the bench.