It was a hot, dry July in 2021 and a cohort of seven young English footballers was basking in the belief that they were flying to the moon.
Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish, Jadon Sancho, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ben Chilwell, Kalvin Phillips and Raheem Sterling had all been in the England squad that reached the final of the European Championships that summer and when the pain of the penalty shoot-out receded, the Premier League seemed like a cloudless sky.
Rashford signed a seven-year partnership with Nike that month, campaigned for child literacy and powerfully articulated the devastation he felt at a shoot-out miss in an Instagram post liked by more than four and a half million people.
Grealish moved to Manchester City in a £100million British record transfer deal. Sancho made a £73million move from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United. Calvert-Lewin was looking to build on his 16-goal season for Everton in the previous campaign: his best for the club.
After a first full season at Chelsea, Chilwell was emerging as one of the best full-backs in England. Phillips, the rock of a campaign which had seen Leeds finish ninth, was being linked to United and Liverpool. Sterling was optimistic that Grealish’s arrival posed him no threat.
Four years on, the prospects for the seven are unrecognisable. All unwanted by their clubs, most stranded on mind-boggling salaries which make them unbuyable, some unwilling to take a cut, these players – England’s lost boys – are viewed by some managers as too much of a risk, too toxic, even if they were affordable. That big blue sky has crashed in on them all.
Marcus Rashford (right) and Jadon Sancho (left) were flying high with England four years ago
Rashford and Sancho are part of the cohort who have struggled in recent seasons
Jack Grealish is another who finds himself at a career crossroads this summer
The diminishing currency of Rashford’s social posts are a microcosm of his own receding worth. That 400-word Instagram post on the penalty miss – a powerful assertion of identity amid the racism that had followed it: ‘I will never apologise for who I am’ – came at a time when there were immensely positive influences around him.
Earlier this month, he was reduced to posting an image of himself in a Manchester gym – a footballer’s now hackneyed way of promoting a work ethic. From four million likes four summers back, Rashford latest garnered fewer than 400,000, with replies mocking his comment that there were ‘no days off.’
His move to Barcelona means him taking a 15 per wage cut and there have been doubts whether they will even be able to play him, given their long-running issues registering players within La Liga’s strict salary limits.
The club are currently over their limit: an uncertain situation that led Athletic Club forward Nico Williams to decide against joining the club this summer, after a deal had otherwise been agreed.
Rashford’s fall has been by far the most precipitous of the seven. By 2021, with positive voices around him to help build an off-field value, he had brand deals with Nat West, Levi’s, Burberry and Beats, as well as Nike – associations worth £20million a year to him. Most of them have gone, wanting no association with this boy, masquerading as a 27-year-old, who lacks positive influences in his coterie now.
There have been attempts to save Rashford from this descent in chaos. It was suggested a while back that he spend some time with David Beckham at his home in Oxfordshire. Beckham was willing to be that mentor. It didn’t happen. Time with a psychologist far away from the current influences was also suggested. That doesn’t appear to have happened.
Wayne Rooney has been enlisted to give support. There has been nothing more substantial to halt the slide, or even to acknowledge one. From an overseas break when he was supposed to be recovering from the bronchitis, to skipping Aston Villa’s FA Cup semi-final to watch a boxing fight, this life has become what one source who knows him well describes as ‘self-sabotage.’
Rashford even makes Grealish seem like the soul of sobriety and though the love of a good time has contributed to the Manchester City player’s own career crash, it’s not out of control.
Grealish looks certain to move away from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City this summer
Many of England’s Euro 2021 team have struggled for various reasons since the tournament
But while Grealish is supremely likeable, undertaking work for many causes for which he courts no publicity, there is still a sense that he has been living in the gilded cage for so long, with a vastly inflated sense of his own worth that those around him could do far more to challenge.
The same sense of entitlement is there in Sancho, who has been hearing positive messages about himself since he was a 14-year-old in Watford’s academy and whose loose grasp of the idea of good time-keeping bears out a sense, held by many in the game, that he, like Rashford, needs to hear more home truths.
When the then England manager Gareth Southgate flew to Germany to see Sancho play a Saturday game during his first Borussia Dortmund period, he found that the player had been dropped for not turning up at a team meeting.
The departure a year ago of Benni McCarthy, one of United’s coaching team with whom Sancho had a close relationship, was a blow. Sancho is a rather shy, introverted individual who needs an arm around his shoulder and who was stunned by Erik ten Hag’s decision, in December 2022, to go public on the player’s mental health difficulties.
There were real concerns from the club’s HR team that Sancho had grounds to make a legal complaint. But Sancho has delivered only fragments of potential. There’s a reason why he’s bounced around three clubs since 2021.
Sancho was stunned by Erik ten Hag’s treatment of him at Manchester United
Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s fashion activities were viewed dimly by some Everton fans
Calvert-Lewin also seems to consider himself better than his performances have suggested, though a year ago he went to a neuro training centre used by top sprinters in Munich to work on his physique and mentality.
A change-around of agents brought different priorities, including fashion shoots which many Everton fans took a dim view of. A GQ cover story Calvert-Lewin posed for professed him to be a ‘standard bearer for new flamboyance.’ He hadn’t scored for eight months at the time.
An older head in Calvert-Lewin’s entourage has wanted to make sure his football was right, before too much more of this frippery, and sense prevailed. The 28-year-old also become a father for a second time at the end of last season and married his long-term partner this summer.
But despite scoring only 21 Premier League goals in the past four years, Calvert-Lewin, who turned down a new Everton contract last December and is now a free agent, has a very elevated idea of the calibre of club he might go to next. In Italy, it would be Milan not the likes of a Fiorentina. One source feels he has a total lack of grip on reality.
For Sterling and Chilwell the current predicament is different. Both were bumped into the Chelsea ‘bomb squad’ because a new manager’s obsessive pursuit of young players meant their faces didn’t fit.
Sterling was seen by the club as lucrative Saudi Arabia material last summer. Paperwork was completed with the Saudis in readiness for a deal which would have gone a long way to easing out Chelsea’s debt.
Ben Chilwell (pictured at the FA Cup final) was loaned out by Chelsea to Crystal Palace
But Sterling understandably didn’t want to be pushed into the Middle East, after five years settling his family into London and the pleasure he was taking in watching his son, Thiago, developing into an under-9s player at Arsenal’s academy. He sees him there a lot.
He called Chelsea’s bluff when it seemed to be a choice between the bomb squad or the desert. ‘I’ll stay, then. You won’t push me around,’ was the essence of it, before the loan move to Arsenal came in at the eleventh hour, with Chelsea paying a third of his £300,000-a-week salary.
It can’t be said that it’s worked out, though Sterling’s influence on younger Arsenal players, including Ethan Nwaneri, reflect the same mentoring role he has come to adopt at Chelsea.
Now Sterling is back where he was a year ago, without a word of communication from Chelsea, whose loan player technical coach is Carlo Cudicini, since the day he left and no indication as to when he is to report for training. All seems on hold on that front for now following Chelsea’s successful Club World Cup campaign.
Sterling, a 30-year-old player with ten trophies behind him, differs from the rest of this group of seven. He has had a successful career. He just wants to play football – and though there have been neither conversations, nor approaches, a London club like Fulham, Crystal Palace or West Ham would seemingly fit, given that the money isn’t he be-all and end-all for him.
Palace would have taken Sterling on loan in a heartbeat, a year ago, had there been the remotest chance. Danny Welbeck’s late career flourish at Brighton, free of the harshest spotlight, demonstrates the possibilities. But there’s less churn at clubs than there used to be. Fewer open doors.
Raheem Sterling called Chelsea’s bluff and they paid part of his wages on loan at Arsenal
Phillips is the tragic figure in the mix; an individual who was the talk of the nation in that summer of 2021, having started every game in England’s European Championship campaign. Those know him best describe an awe, bordering on disbelief, at being signed by City in the first place. It was surprising to some just how astonished he seemed by the technical standard he found.
He would not have anticipated Guardiola’s utter unreadability. Several established City players have described privately how the manager seemed satisfied with them in training yet cut them dead in the corridor afterwards. He will lose faith and interest in a player at a stroke – hard for a less worldly type like Phillips. There have been times when Phillips hasn’t seemed to read a room or public situation. His prominence on City’s treble winning open-top bus tour was notable, when the best advice, given his struggle to impress, would have been to maintain a low profile.
Chilwell had that naivete too, telling Leicester team-mates in training before his move to Chelsea was even announced that he was giddy at the prospect of playing with Thiago Silva, whom the club bought from PSG the same summer. When he revealed this in an interview after leaving the King Power, a section of Leicester fans loathed him for it. There’s going back to Leicester for him.
The options for all seven players will also be restricted by the reluctance of some managers to take stellar names, with the ego, noise and challenges that can bring. ‘Never buy a player who’s taking a step down to join you. He’ll act as if he’s doing you a favour,’ George Graham once said when Arsenal manager. One recent Premier League manager’s expression for such players is ‘fat and full.’
Chilwell was giddy at the prospect of leaving Leicester for Chelsea but then fell out of favour
Ethan Nwaneri (left) was helped by Sterling (right) in a mentoring role at Arsenal
Clubs are now far more focussed on the characters of players – how will they cohere with the group? – than they used to be. They are using the services of former police and security services staff to build a psychological picture of prospective signings extending way beyond the old assessment of media coverage and social media posts.
‘If you’re paying out £40million for a player, why wouldn’t you spend £70,000 for that work,’ says a source who worked in player acquisition at several Premier League clubs.
At some clubs, psychologists provide directors of football with draft questions designed to form character assessments. ‘When it comes to signing players like this, you’re asking yourself: ‘So what’s gone wrong here?’ adds the source.
Weighing in such players’ favour, though, is the ego that some managers themselves bring to the equation. ‘Some coaches love the challenge,’ says the source. ‘They want to be the one who can say, “I turned him around”. That’s their own ego at work.
It’s why so many managers were determined to sign Ravel Morrison when everything pointed to him being a lost cause. It was, ‘I’ll get him. I’ll be the one who gets through to him.’ The former United prospect has played for 14 clubs in as many years and is now in the Danish second tier.
Will these players accept a pay cut or be trapped by their own vast salaries? That’s the £300,000-a-week question. One American executive, running one of the US-owned Premier League clubs, recently asked: ‘how many sports cars do you actually need?’ in a conversation with a player about his six-figure salary.’
But ego does the talking. England camps team are typically a place where one player discovers another is on ‘320’ and doesn’t want to take a drop to ‘100.’ A lot of the game is about confidence and swagger and for some it extends to cash, regardless of how hard it is to spend that much.
Kalvin Phillips was said to be astonished by the technical standards at City
Sancho will have to swallow some of his ego. With his £275,000-a-week wages a significant stumbling block, United may struggle to sell and would consider another loan amid interest from Juventus.
The Grealish camp is unaware of City’s reported £40million valuation of him and a loan deal seems more likely. He is desperate to make next summer’s World Cup squad. Everton do not have a fortune to spend on a contribution to wages. The are several European suitors.
Calvert-Lewin could move to Newcastle, where Eddie Howe feels he could get something out of him. His free agent status appeals and on his day, he is one of the best headers of the ball in the Premier League. A highly incentivised appearance and goal-based deal might be necessary.
Phillips is the most profoundly lost: out until August after Achilles surgery, unlikely to command the £20million City would want for him, so looking at a loan as they run his contract down.
A late loan deal taking him home to Leeds is an outside possibility and he would jump at it. He was at a Kaiser Chiefs gig at Temple Newsam in Leeds, last month, where former team-mate Patrick Bamford joined the band and played along on guitar to ‘I Predict A Riot.’
Phillips’ social media post that night, tagging in Bamford and former Leeds teammate Luke Ayling, telegraphed those old ties. Chilwell is also in a no man’s land – a pure professional whose only ‘crime’ is not fitting Chelsea’s obsession with young players.
An example of how the younger of these marooned players might escape their current predicament comes, rather improbably from the members of that England Euros squad whose podcast title, ‘You’ll never beat Kyle Walker’ has been a source of mirth.
After a loan spell at AC Milan, Walker has signed for Burnley, where the presence of Scott Parker, whom he knew from their two seasons together at Tottenham, could also see him involved in coaching. Spurs away for the Clarets on the opening day is not how Walker foresaw things as he prepared for another £200,000-a-week season at City last year.
Rashford landed in Barcelona on Sunday and what lies in store for him is uncertain
‘Do you know how good this lad is? Do you know how dedicated?’ Grealish said of Walker recently. ‘He set the bar for us. He had the hunger.’
Hunger was the same commodity that Roy Keane, who knows something of, discussed during a recent comparison of the merits of Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise and Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal. ‘Talent?’ Keane said. ‘They’ve both got it. But Olise trains like he’s got rent due. He reminds me of early Rashford. Hungry, locked in, lethal. That’s who I want in my XI.’
That young Manchester boy Keane was describing is long gone, now, and what lies ahead for him at Barcelona uncertain. He arrived for that Carrington gym session this month in a £177k Audi. You don’t pay rent when you’re on £300,000 a week.
