A year ago, Chelsea signed Radamel Falcao on loan from Monaco. The move was met with shock and awe from the fans and neutrals alike, given that the Colombian was just coming off a horrid loan spell at Manchester United and wasn’t the feared striker many had known him to be.
Chelsea fans were hopeful that Jose Mourinho would be able to bring out the best from the striker that had tormented them in the UEFA Super Cup 3 years ago. His record spoke for itself, after all, was it possible for such brilliant ability to suddenly vanish? Unfortunately, the naysayers and the doubters were eventually proven right.
46 goals in 111 appearances for River Plate.
72 goals in 87 appearances for Porto.
70 goals in 91 appearances for Atletico Madrid.
13 goals in 22 appearances for Monaco.
Falcao would have likely gone on to continue his goal scoring record in France, if it weren’t for that fateful ACL injury. The Colombian has never truly recovered from it 2 years on, which has resulted in two disastrous spells at Manchester United and Chelsea. He could only manage 4 goals in 29 appearances for the Red Devils and 1 for Chelsea in 12 appearances.
According to the Telegraph, he earned £140,000 per week at Chelsea – a price that seemed to be a bit too high, given the striker’s previous season at Old Trafford, coupled with lengthy spells on the sidelines. He made only 10 appearances in the Premier League for the now deposed Champions of England, during which he was on the pitch for only 228 minutes and each of those minutes cost the club £32,000.
Intriguingly, he had 9 shots on goal, of which 5 were on target and created a dismal 2 chances for his team. Those shots cost Abrahmovich a staggering £809,000 and £1.46 million for every time his effort found the target. He is reported to have touched the ball on 146 times and completed 63 successful passes.Thus making each touch worth £57,000 and every pass costing the club a colossal £116,000.
Would it be correct to place all the blame on Falcao? Managerial changes, bad form, toxic dressing room atmosphere and not to mention those nagging injuries, have all contributed to his bad form. He would have decided to come to Chelsea, hoping to be a part of a dressing room of champions and being led by one of the best managers in the world. Clearly, that was not what happened and Chelsea’s experiment was a failure.
It was an extremely expensive failure, one that cost Roman Abrahmovich and Chelsea a total of £7.28 million. To put it into perspective, N’Golo Kante and Jamie Vardy cost Leicester City around £6.6 million, put together. Only the Chelsea board known what they were thinking when they decided to go get yet another striker who was past his best in the form of Alexandre Pato in January, albeit he was far cheaper project compared to Falcao.
