Go out there and have fun. It’s an old sports mantra that is usually contradicted in the speaker’s next breath. Players are told to enjoy the game as they did when they were kids while simultaneously carrying the weight and pressure of team, personal and managerial expectations. Be carefree but not too lackadaisical. A commentator will chide a player for not taking the game seriously enough if he loses the ball while trying to dribble past his defender, after having previously offered that said player should take more risks in trying to break down the defense.
No one is more fun to watch than Real Madrid’s James Rodriguez
The baby-faced Real Madrid midfielder brings a kid’s creativity and a veteran’s economy to La Liga.
Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
With this paradox in place, there’s a certain fun that’s absent from high-level games. Everything is intricate and calculated. Each team move is the result of hours of tactical training, practice and film review. The directive is to only do what you must and if you should deviate, differ in the most cost-effective way possible (admittedly some people, sadists, find that entertaining but we should shun and shame them).
That is, unless you're the rare breed of player who can transcend the tactics and find joy in the repetitive chaos of the pass and move game. The creators. The defiant. The omega is, of course, Lionel Messi. But he's fun in the same way that using the moon gravity cheat code in Tony Hawk Pro Skater is; you're just watching to see just how many physical and universal laws he can get away with breaking.
The rest are the players whose feats come to mark a time and place. They are the ones who define points in your life with outrageous displays of skill that you scoff at in disbelief. No one forgets Ronaldinho’s performance at the Bernabeu on Nov. 19, 2005, nor Thierry Henry’s clip and volley against Manchester United on Sept. 30, 2000.
James Rodriguez is carving himself out to be that type of player since his move to Real Madrid. It seems like every week there's another video of him scoring a cosmically outrageous, yet personally nonchalant goal.
He wasn't quite unknown before moving to the white side of Madrid after the World Cup, having moved from Porto to Monaco for €45 million. He was also proclaimed as the best player in Ligue 1 in his one and only season for the French side, helping them secure a Champions League spot and being voted into the best XI for the league at the end of the campaign.
His €80 million transfer fee made him the third most expensive player in Real Madrid history. But despite the ransom many were right to be cautious in their expectations for the 24-year-old. Madrid already had an overflow of star players, and the midfield was so crowded that it seemed that the team was stockpiling talent rather than addressing key needs. The questions flooded in like the 45,000 people at his presentation: How good could he possibly be if he only scored nine goals in France? Where would he play in that crowded central midfield? Would he be just another Kaka?
His World Cup performances went a long way in shutting everyone up. He was arguably the best player in the tournament along with Neymar and Messi before his Colombia were eliminated. And in the following season with Real Madrid, he did what few have ever accomplished in that pressure cooker of a squad: he became so good that it was impossible to leave him out of the side. It wasn’t then a question of where would he play, it became an inquiry of who would play alongside him.
An unfortunate fracture in his metatarsal put a damper on things but the evidence was there now. James Rodriguez was not only the future of Real Madrid but of Colombia as well.
Against Real Betis, the Colombian scored his first from a free kick. The ball was the edge on the right side of the box. The angle was acute enough for the sane person and the goalkeeper to believe that it would just be an in-swinger into the congregation of awaiting bodies. Instead the boy-faced midfielder took a few deep breaths, steadied his run and punched the ball so well and hard with his left foot that it swerved outwards before violently dipping back in.
The keeper, to his credit, made a good dive but it’s hard to contend a shot when the shooter is using Matrix-style effects on the ball.
His second goal was a 10 on the stylistic points system. After a laughable Betis clearance fell to Toni Kroos at the top of the box, the German connected with a weak shot that went to Rodriguez in front of the six-yard box. The Colombian touched the ball into the air with his right foot, time dallied for a moment, and then he connected with such a pretty bicycle kick that the resultant goal should have counted for two. Bikes as a rule can only be eights and above but one that aesthetically pleasing deserves its own magazine cover.
Sergio Ramos even attempted one a few minutes later in a fit of envy.
It's more than just the goals, of course, and his overall performance was easily Man of the Match-worthy. From the on-set Rodriguez's quality signaled again why he's key for this Real Madrid side. His second pass in the game was an easy, deep chip-cross beyond the defense and onto the head of an expectant Gareth Bale. His next involvement was running to support Karim Benzema, who tangled with a defender near the center circle. After getting the layoff, he waited for Benzema to beat three defenders with his central run before releasing him into a one-on-one with the keeper.
He didn’t let up from that. The whole match he buzzed around the pitch, creating dangerous chances from any and every position. It was his one-two and subsequent lead-pass to Bale that led to Benzema’s goal. And it was his smart pass to the inside that led to Bale’s rocket from distance. The boy who was bludgeoned with suggestions of a being a vanity buy was a class above the other galacticos. And not for the first time.
The youthfully energetic and cunningly daring play are what make Rodriguez so fun to watch. He’s incredibly smart and aware on the pitch. He uses space well, supports his teammates consistently -- whether dropping deep for the defenders or racing to a entrapped forward -- and is technically adept. He hardly takes unnecessary touches on the ball, can pass and cross on target with his eyes closed and can hit a shot whichever way it comes to him.
But more importantly he looks like he’s having a child’s fun out there, as if he’s really just playing a schoolyard game and not just struggling through another day at work. Then of course, he physically does looks like an enlarged three-year-old. His limbs and torso are short and chubby and his face with its large eyes and chin and expressive big smile of a child could be mistaken for his daughter’s twin brother.
He scurries about more than actually running, his moments of frustration with the referee seem to have him on a constant verge of tears and his older teammates protect and console him as if he's still the innocent sibling that you must guard against the world's corruptions. He even managed to get Cristiano Ronaldo to dance, which usually only happens in cringe-worthy commercials.
Even Rodriguez’s attempts at sexy magazine shoots come off as awkward as a middle school kid flexing for his crush. It’s much more endearing than salacious.
Beyond his spectacular volley against Uruguay at the World Cup (another goal that won’t be forgotten), the lasting image of him during that summer was his expressions of happiness. The dancing celebrations, the smiles and the hugs; the general bubbly atmosphere that he carries with him. It’s impossible for any feeling human to not coo and aww at watching him dance with his wife and daughter after winning the Puskas award for the best goal.
Nor can anyone deny just how cute this is:
Rodriguez is fun because he reminds us what love for the game looks like. Hopefully, Rafa Benitez, the mad tinkerer, doesn’t find a way to take that joy out of our lives.
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