Brian Munich
teH lulZ
- Jul 7, 2008
- 485
Even Caicedo was eased in with half a season playing U21s before half a season on loan in Belgium. Whilst he made an instant impact, it was probably quite a nice introduction slotting into a midfield alongside Bissouma, Mac Allister and Gross.The way we operate, not all of them will work out. Some of them are very young and may take time to adapt- Mac Allister took a good two and a half seasons, for example. Bissouma probably a year or so. You're talking about 18, 19 year olds who are uprooted from their homes and families and moving thousands of miles, in some cases having to live on their own for the first time, in countries where they don't speak the language and have to learn to do all the everyday little things that the rest of us just crack on with like shopping and passing their driving tests and paying for parking (or not, in Bissouma's case). For those of you with 18 year old children: how do you think they'd function if you sent them off to Paraguay or Argentina and told them to rent a house, find a job and get on with it? Sometimes I think our expectations of these lads are insane. Caicedo was the exception to the rule in that the moment he got into the team, he hit the ground running, but you can't expect all players to do that.
Barco has not failed: he's just had a tougher time at Sevilla than might have been expected. He may come back and be great: he may not. Even if we end up selling him for £15 million to somebody (a low fee by our recent standards): does that make him a failure? I don't think so. He'll still be a very good professional footballer somewhere.
