N’Golo Kante’s body is now either broken or at breaking point, but what are his spells between injury worth to Chelsea? He’s still their best ‘big game’ player.
Not long ago, Chelsea had a self-imposed rule which meant they would not offer a contract of more than a year to a player over the age of 30. The reasoning was two-fold: allow a path for players to be promoted from the youth team; ensure all their assets have a sell-on value.
Thirty was an arbitrary number selected for no reason other than Chelsea wanting a hard and fast point at which to make a distinction between members of their squad. Why 30? Despite medical advancements and numerous examples to the contrary, football is still obsessed with that age as the barrier between peak years and those of decline.
Like the ‘pregnant by 30’ trope, the reasoning is illogical. You will be slightly less likely to get pregnant at 31, but there are myriad, and far more cogent, factors involved. Genetics, mental and physical fitness, luck: they are all more significant than how old you are…in pregnancy and football.
Chelsea have thankfully woken up to the groundlessness of their own mandate, breaking it first for David Luiz (32) in 2019, and subsequently for Cesar Azpilcueta (33) and Kalidou Koulibaly (31), who will be 35 and 36 respectively at the end of their current contracts.
We could be in the age of the geriatric footballer. 34-year-old Robert Lewandowski cost Barcelona £40m and is under contract at the Nou Camp until he’s 38. They weren’t thinking of his age, instead looking at an injury record which has seen him miss under 20 games of football in the last seven years.
Injury, not age, is the problem for Kante and Chelsea. The 31-year-old says he wants to finish his career at Stamford Bridge and is therefore holding out for a three-year contract with the option of a further year, rather than the two-plus-one deal Chelsea have put on the table. Given he is currently enduring his 17th separate stint on the sidelines through injury or illness in just over three years, the club’s caution is understandable, as is Kante’s desire for security.
It’s got to a point now where the joy of seeing Kante at his best – as he was against Tottenham this season, for example – is dampened by the inevitability of his absence in the not-too-distant future. His body is now always either broken or at breaking point.
Were he not N’Golo Kante, there is little chance Chelsea would have offered…
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