Mateo Kovacic’s move to Manchester City was confirmed this week, and it’s time to reflect.
Kovacic was very much like marmite amongst the Chelsea fanbase, you had fans who either absolutely adored him, and fans who absolutely hated him, there wasn’t a lot between the two.
It was all a bit weird and just one of many civil wars amongst Chelsea fans who seemingly love nothing more than to sit and argue about our players all day on Twitter.
To be honest, to me Kovacic was excellent on his day, but certainly had some flaws. In a nutshell, technically he is superb and one of the best ball carriers and press resistant players in the world. But for a number 8, his lack of quality in the final third, lack of creativity, and being unable to contribute with enough goals and assists, just wasn’t good enough. When he was poor he was really poor, when he was good he was really good. He was also a defensive liability at times.
For a long time he was my favourite player at Chelsea. I just absolutely love watching him glide past players and making it look like it was the easiest thing in the world. I love watching players like that.
Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images
None of us really know what kind of contributions he had off the field, and I guess we will never know. But managers obviously loved him, and last season felt that he was captain-worthy, even though I didn’t agree with that decision. But they must have saw something in him. Damn, Pep Guardiola sees something in him!
I actually think he will be unreal in Pep’s City team, a possession-based team full of quality around him, he will be able to be expressive without worry.
At the end of the day, he wasn’t going to sign a new contract, and we have just got £30m for a player who is quickly heading to his 30s and in the last year of his contract, I think it’s a bit of a no brainer this deal.
I guess I will miss bit of Kovacic for sure, and I do wish him the best. I certainly never hated him, or underappreciated him, and at times I did adore him. But I call it how I see it and it was the right time to sell him. Perhaps many fans did under rate him, but I also think many OVER rated him too.
I guess we are just in that era, there is never any middle ground with fans these days and they all just want to point score for their agendas. Sad.
Goodbye Kova, thanks for the memories.
