Feature: The Forgotten Javier Saviola

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Javier Saviola - Real Madrid

He scored a goal with his left foot against Athletic de Bilbao at the weekend, could’ve well scored with his right on a couple of occasions, was lively throughout and darted pangs of fear deep into the opposition defenders’ hearts. But life for Javier Pedro Saviola remains the same stuffing up in a hat with not so much as a nose-pipe holed in to breathe in optimism.  

Life in a hat for the Rabbit (as Saviola is termed for his scurrying runs) has become a norm. Hell, it has been a compatible situation since the summer of 2004 when he was virtually forced out of the Camp Nou cathedral. Since then Saviola’s enforced nomadic lifestyle trajectory has arched through Monaco to Seville back to Barcelona and now to Madrid. The Argentine international might still be only 26 but it certainly looks as if he has been a fooballing vagabond for eternity.  

Even at Madrid, Saviola has been relegated to the bench. He was a much trumpeted summer signing on a free, an expelled Barcelona favourite annexed by Madrid to inflict insult coupled with injury on the Catalans. Here at last Saviola could at least hope to be loved by everyone without fearing any underlying tensions and more importantly play regular football and justify just why at 18he was draped with the South American Player of the year honours in 1999. Madrid might be geographically amidst a desert but the Bernabeu fountain would just refurbish Saviola.  

Hell, it has been anything but. Javier Saviola remains the same as he has been for the last three years, an unwanted Argentine heaped to make up the numbers. True, his intrusion into the Real Madrid first team was never going to be a straightforward walk-in-as-easy-as-you-like phenomenon but there were at least considerable rays of hope bleeding though. But with just four more rounds of matches remaining in La Liga this season, Saviola is still stuck in first gear.  

The 26-year old has started just four league matches and played as a substitute on three other occasions and has hit the back of the opposition net just twice. In the UEFA Champions League, he has featured twice, both times from the bench failing to score either time. He has been crippled by recurring injury woes and when they’ve subsided, Bernd Schuster has continued to ignore him and relegated him to the substitutes’ bench.  

Saviola has been treated as a liability rather than as an asset at the Bernabeu and has been buttonholed in a tiny space in the Bernabeu dug-out for most of the time. Yet eight or nine years ago, such a prospect was light years away from Saviola’s mind. With his Argentine colleagues Pablo Aimar and Juan Pablo Angel, the diminutive Argentine with a hobbit’s height formed a formidable triumvirate that convinced people to hang the cursed El Diego II nickname albatross round his neck.  

It was this River Plate form that seduced the then Barcelona president Joan Gasper to import him to Camp Nou in the summer of 2001. For the first couple of years, Saviola’s brimming youth and buoyant dynamism drove an essentially aging and redundant Barcelona side. He scored 21 goals in all competitions in his first season in Spain and scripted his signature on the goal against Panathinaikos that threaded Barca to the Champions League semis.  

The very next season Javier Saviola scored 20 goals in 41 starts in all competitions but trouble had commenced to crop up. Coach Louis van Gaal openly declared his lack of faith in Saviola and with the change of regime in the 2003 summer, things began to go downhill for the player.  

New Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard persuaded new president Joan Laporta to offload the player but it’s still a mystery whether the reasons for getting rid of the player were solely footballing. Saviola went to AS Monaco for the 2004-2005 season, scored 8 goals in French Ligue 1, 4 in the Champions Legue, returned to Camp Nou and was on his loan travel again, this time to Sevilla FC for a year.  

Saviola spent the entire of last season at Camp Nou refusing 14---yes, 14---offers to move on. In 24 appearances for Rijkaard’s side, he hit a decent 10 goals, thereby insisting that the King Midas touch is still there.  

And even inside the Bernabeu dugout that golden touch retains its worth. Saviola attested against Atheltic de bilbao that he still possesses a major slice of his old River Plate pace, that he can still dribble past a mist of players, that he can still reinvent himself. At only 26, the 5’6” striker is far from finished but Saviola is that sort of a South American personality who needs to be surrounded by his own clan to develop.  

For Saviola to plough out his best, he needs to be loved and trusted. At Real Madrid, there is no care as he has been shelved to the oblivion of the squad members. Even midway through the season, there were talks of selling out the player and he is almost certain to move out of the Bernabeu at the end of the season although Saviola himself vehemently disagrees.

The stark, naked truth is that Real Madrid do not want him and the transfer rumour mill has churned out the unlikely name of Boca Juniors. Saviola wouldn’t go to Boca of course for obvious reasons but could, should and would go elsewhere should be want to rescue himself.    

Subhankar Mondal