Go on, admit it. You’d forgotten where Alvaro Morata is these days, hadn’t you?
No judgement here. Morata has had such a career of back-and-forths that we wouldn’t blame his own mother for losing track.
Were we to tell you he scored two goals on his first appearance of the season, without checking you probably wouldn’t be entirely sure whether it was Atletico Madrid’s 3-0 win over Getafe or Juventus’ 3-0 win over Sassuolo last night.
Well done if you said Atleti. Yes, Morata is back in the Spanish capital. Again.
The striker doesn’t turn 30 until later this year, yet this is already the third time in his career that he’s returned to Madrid after a two-year sojourn away.
Juventus, Chelsea, Juventus again. Atletico, Getafe, Real, Real, Atletico, Atletico. Always searching for a home, never quite finding it, not even in the city he was born in.
It’s been a career that’s existed almost entirely in grey. Never mind the Bianconeri, there’s nothing black or white about Morata.
He’s both the guy that scores a late equaliser for Spain against Italy in the Euro 2020 semi-finals and the one that misses a penalty in the shootout. He’s the guy that scores a brilliant hat-trick, only for all three goals to be disallowed.
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READ: Morata’s offside hat-trick confirms he’s the world’s saddest footballer
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You don’t lift the trophies he has or notch over 200 career goals for club and country by being a waste of space.
Yet, so rarely in his career has he ever been that guy.
Even when he scored a career-best 15 league goals as Zinedine Zidane’s Blancos secured a rare and historic Champions League and La Liga double in 2016-17, he was the poster boy for the B-Team, brought in regularly to give the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema a rest, inevitably finding himself on the bench on the biggest European nights.
He moved to Chelsea to become that guy. Time for the A-Team. Scoring a better-than-you-remember 11 league goals in his debut season – a tally Chelsea forwards have often struggled to match since his departure – he fell just short of ever quite convincing in the Premier League.
Six ft three in and wearing No.9, he should look the picture of a leading man. But those sad eyes have always painted the picture of a sensitive soul. His 2019 move to Atletico Madrid felt like casting Dawson from Dawson’s Creek as Rambo. It never looked like a natural fit.
But maybe there was twisted logic,…
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