Five players who should change their destination. Hazard and Pulisic are not missing

Lack of space on the pitch, dislike of the coach, strong competition at his position, stagnation, or perhaps an unsatisfactory style of play. These are just a few of the many reasons why any player could be heading for the exit at his current club. In this article, we take a look at five football personalities. Each from a different league, each in a different situation. What they all have in common, however, is the fact that they should, at least in our opinion, change their location in the next transfer window and develop their playing potential at a better suited address.

Christian Pulisic

With seventeen players signed this season towards the end of the January transfer window, it’s inevitable that a London Chelsea player will appear on this list. Perhaps it wouldn’t be difficult to find five players looking for a new club in the Blues current roster alone.

One player who has been linked with leaving Chelsea for several transfer seasons is Christian Pulisic. The United States national team’s brightest star never seemed to catch on in London. Injuries have certainly done their part.

54 games missed since his transfer in January 2019, what’s worse, with thirteen different reasons, Pulisic is absent even now. This time, the knee is to blame. But in the past he has also been troubled by ankle, hamstring or calf problems.

Unfulfilled expectations, the former BVB player faced an impossible fate from the start. Perceived as the successor to Eden Hazard, the biggest star of at least Chelsea’s modern history, the American winger was not making his presence felt even before leaving the Bundesliga.

He followed up a record of three goals and eight assists in fifteen hundred minutes during his first full season in a Borussia Dortmund jersey with a record of 4+6, but in noticeably more minutes, and finally 4+4 in half a season before leaving for England.

Nine goals scored and another six created, the year under Frank Lampard’s tutelage is thus Pulisic’s best season to date. However, he only crossed the 2,000 minutes mark once during one league campaign, back in Germany.

At still only twenty-four, the misunderstood and injury-plagued Pulisic should be looking for a new deal. With a year on his contract and countless substitutes at the club, it would be a surprise if Chelsea stood in his way of a more suitable destination.

Lucas Alario

For Lucas Alario, the ‘New Arrival’ signboard is still hanging on the Transfermarkt website. However, from Frankfurt, where he only transferred to a season ago, he should be looking for the next flight somewhere that will let him on the pitch. Alario has already played in fifteen league games, but only 256 minutes in total.

He was in a similar situation last season as a Bayer Leverkusen player. However, his search for more playing time than Patrik Schick’s form last year allowed him to get has run into this season’s discovery, Randal Kolo Muani.

Muani may not have come to the attention of the wider footballing public properly until this year, but Eintracht’s scouts have not missed the form of his last two seasons, when he first netted nine goals in an FC Nantes jersey, supplemented by eight assists, and then twelve goals and five assists.

Thus, he came to the Europa League winners’ side at the same time as Alario and immediately drew attention to himself on his debut with a consolidation goal behind Manuel Neuer. He hasn’t stopped scoring and creating goals yet, and Alario has once again found himself in the role of spectator.

To make matters even more complicated, Rafael Borré is keeping him company on the bench. The Colombian striker, who led Eintracht to the Europa League title last season, is getting more space than his South American teammate.

But after winning several trophies with River Plate in his native Argentina, Alario has already shown he can be a valid Bundesliga finisher if given the space. He won’t get that at Eintracht via Muani and his former River Plate teammate Borre. Hopefully the next transfer will be a happier one. Even at 30, Alario still has a lot to offer.

Moussa Dembélé

We’ll stick to strikers. Moussa Dembélé was already linked with a move away last summer. Indeed, the twenty-six year old French youth international only had a year left on his current contract at the time. With his contract expiring, an exit is on offer.

Olympique Lyon already brought back Alexandre Lacazette in the summer after his contract at Arsenal expired. Dembélé thus lost his place in the lineup at the start of the season, and although he has since started to pick up minutes, the club is not counting on him nearly as much as they used to.

The Paris Saint-Germain academy graduate has already tried the step up from Lyon. In the 2020/21 season, he was a guest at Atlético Madrid. However, Diego Simeone didn’t give him the space to show his qualities during his half season at the club, and although the coronavirus contributed, he only let his potential reinforcement run out to less than a hundred league minutes.

With an otherwise steady goal product of around fifteen goals per season with last year’s 21-goal season as the icing on the cake, without the need to buy him out of his expiring contract, an acquisition would mean minimal risk for the next club and hope for regular minutes for Dembélé.

Daniele Rugani

Juventus Turin’s central defender has been under similar headlines for years. So why bring him up again now? After all, Rugani will have just one year left on his contract in the summer. This is the best opportunity to end a link that has been in place since February 1, 2015, when Rugani arrived in Turin from Empoli.

Taking to the pitch in anything other than a striped black and white jersey is also no longer taboo for the seven-time Italian international. He spent the 2020/21 season on loan, first at Stade Rennais and then, having played just ninety minutes in France due to injury, at Cagliari.

Now twenty-eight years old, Rugani doesn’t get much space even though Juventus only have four dedicated central defenders in the squad. Bonucci, who is closer to forty than thirty, summer signing Bremer, and Federico Gatti, who only returned from a loan spell in Italy’s second league this summer, have played more in the league. In the three-man defence, Danilo and Alex Sandro, nominally outside backs, play regularly at the flanks.

If Rugani was ever going to leave Juventus, when, if not with a year on his contract and after a season in which he has been given more minutes as a returnee from a loan spell in the second division and at stopper, the flank defenders are preferred over him?

Eden Hazard

One hundred and fifteen million euros. Seven goals and eleven assists in all competitions since the summer of 2019. In total, still about five hundred league minutes less than in his last season at Chelsea. Nearly eighty games missed with various health issues. Five hundred days on sick leave in total.

Hazard’s dream transfer to Real Madrid turned into a nightmare for him and the club. When he happens to be available, he remains more and more regularly an unused substitute. He still hasn’t broken the 100-minute mark in the league this season. In the cups, it’s not much better. His goal against Celtic remains a rarity this season.

At thirty-two, Hazard is supposed to be safely past his peak as a winger, but his precipitous fall has surprised many.

Rather than continuing to languish in Madrid until his contract expires at the end of next season, the former Chelsea London star would be better served by a move to a club where he will be given the opportunity to play whenever he is available. A club that will be more reflective of his current level. And where, instead of listing as we did at the start of this segment, we will reminisce about the heights that the multiple Belgian international, two-time English and Spanish champion, two-time Europa League winner and, ultimately, Champions League winner’s medallist has enjoyed.

Sources: Transfermarkt