Jesse Lingard is a non-footballer – he won’t be the last

It’s Jesse Lingard’s birthday. He turns 31 today and at this stage of his life he must realize that it will not be easy to change some of the perceptions that come from being a non-footballer. At least for now.

Talk to Lingard’s former team-mates and they will talk about a man who has been popular at all his clubs and has played at a level, including the World Cup semi-finals, that automatically commands respect among his fellow pros.

But it is also a harsh reality that many others will wonder how a player of Lingard’s track record has spent so long without a club and appears to be less affected by that situation than you might think.

Lingard last played competitive football in April, a two-minute substitute appearance for Nottingham Forest against his former club Manchester United. His last 90-minute appearances in the Premier League came in August 2022 with Forest and before that you have to go back another 15 months to find the previous one, which was on loan from United to West Ham.

Since then it has largely been a period of drift for a player who had previously won 32 England caps and contributed to some of United’s happier moments since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, including scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup finals of 2016. There have been some nagging injuries, some personal issues and only sporadic glimpses of his undoubted talent.

And, just over two years after his last appearance in England, ‘JLingz’ life today has a very different routine: grab a ball and go outside, alone, except for a personal trainer, to work on his fitness .

Something similar happened to Michael Owen when he left United at the end of the 2011-12 season. It quickly became clear that a player who was once a football king, with all the wealth and trappings of superstardom, may have to re-evaluate his position within the club. the sport.

Owen, like Lingard, was in his early thirties. His list of highlights was even more extensive, as a former Ballon d’Or winner, but age was also starting to become his biggest opponent. And while neither man will ever end up on Skid Row, it can’t be easy to adapt when the boundaries shift and the sport as a whole no longer views you so favorably.

In Owen’s case, he was too old, too expensive and too injury-prone for the elite clubs, and there were times during a long and challenging summer when he considered giving up football to devote himself to his horse racing.

“I received a few inquiries from abroad – one from Vancouver Whitecaps, a Canada-based MLS side, and one from an Australian side, Newcastle Jets,” Owen wrote in his 2019 autobiography. “When I considered these two possibilities, neither particularly appealed to me.

Apart from that, Stoke City were the only Premier League side to show any real interest and, if you remember their tactics under Tony Pulis, it always seemed strange to imagine a player of Owen’s size and skill in the attacker. Owen himself had doubts. But he signed for them anyway because the alternative would have meant his absence from football lasting longer than six months – and that is exactly what is now happening to Lingard.

“My God, the whole episode was so empty,” Owen added. “When I first signed for Liverpool I literally couldn’t write my name fast enough. The same was true at Real Madrid and, for that matter, at Manchester United. I have to admit that when I signed (for Stoke) I did so with absolutely no joy. It was just a job and I only signed because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. What else could I do?”

That seems like a question Lingard must have asked himself many times since he started pitching at a sports center in Newton Heath – the area in north Manchester where United was founded – to do his drills, work up a sweat and then upload the photos. on his social media channels with punchy phrases like ‘keep pushing’ or ‘positivity and progress’.

“Even the hardest days will pass eventually,” read a recent post. “We only do positive.”

The intention is presumably to show potential employers how hard he works, how committed he remains to the sport, no matter what anyone may say, and how he is ready for a new challenge. It seems his ambition is to find a team in the US. “Motivation, hunger and love for the game,” read another recent post.

Unfortunately for Lingard, the new MLS season doesn’t start until February. Nothing has been resolved and over the past six months the football industry has become so harsh and cynical enough that many people are questioning its priorities. Why, they want to know, is someone with his abilities unemployed? Doesn’t he care? Doesn’t this damage his professional pride? Because no one wants to be a non-football player, right?

The questions are understandable, because no matter how it is presented, there is nothing orthodox about a footballer being out of action for six months, or possibly longer.

But there is some context here and the nature of modern-day football makes it likely that we will see more of this happening in the future.

Here we have a man of extraordinary wealth who is in a position where he doesn’t have to rush into what he’s going to do next.

It is not about a shortage of offers, according to people with knowledge of the situation who will remain anonymous to protect their positions, or Lingard harboring arrogant assumptions about the level he should be playing. It’s more about waiting for the deal that suits him best, rather than feeling forced or pressured to accept whatever comes his way.

After all, that’s exactly what Owen did with Stoke and look how that turned out. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Owen did not fit into Pulis’ ‘big man at the far post’ methodology, sitting on the bench while Peter Crouch and Jonathan Walters started in attack.

In a moment of tragicomedy, a training session ended with one of the senior pros holding the court in the locker room and asking with a mix of humor and seriousness: “What is Michael Owen doing here anyway?”

Owen, asking himself the same question, retired at the end of the season having failed to make a competitive start, but had offered to resign at least once in recent months.

Against that kind of backdrop, Lingard might be choosy. It might be a lot harder if interest had dried up. But the phone is still ringing and as long as it is, the attitude seems to be: why rush?

Lingard previously trained for several weeks at Al Ettifaq, the Saudi Pro League club where Steven Gerrard is the manager and whose players include Jordan Henderson, Moussa Dembele and Georginio Wijnaldum.

Before that, Lingard had a similar arrangement at West Ham and even turned out for David Moyes’ side in a behind-closed-doors match against Ipswich. Many wondered whether it could lead to something more substantial and give Lingard the chance to mend his relationship with the club’s supporters, who were saddened by his decision to choose Forest over them a year earlier. But nothing came of it and all the talk about Saudi Arabia disappeared too

Wolves toyed with the idea of ​​moving for him. Other Premier League clubs discussed his availability, along with one from Italy. However, nothing worked out and it is worth remembering that, despite everything, Lingard will not be cheap. Forest paid a weekly basic salary of £115,000 ($147,000), plus some eye-watering bonuses, which led to some problems between the players’ camp and the club’s owners.

Lingard is not blameless and you have to wonder if, on reflection, he realizes it was a mistake not to return to West Ham last season, especially as it meant he wasn’t part of the Europa Conference League triumph, the the club’s first major trophy for 43 years. year.

Other offers were proposed by Newcastle United and Fulham, with four-year deals under discussion. Instead, Lingard signed a one-year contract with Forest, where he started only fourteen games, rather than accept the club’s offer of a two-year contract.

Perhaps that was also a mistake, but he and his advisors thought he would be in a stronger position if he played well for a year, which he didn’t and became available on a free transfer.

With that in mind, it becomes easier to understand why Lingard wants to make sure his next choice is the right one.

His penance comes in the form of 24/7 reminders, via the cesspool of social media, that he is a scrounger and a spendthrift, that he has thrown away his career and various other charming responses that accompany all the hostile headlines and regular unpleasantness . that someone in his position has to deal with.

Some people can become extremely angry when they think that a super-rich footballer is not making the most of his talent. It’s an everyday part of Lingard’s life and that’s perhaps the saddest part, as he has tried to open up in the past about some of his tougher times at Old Trafford and his occasional struggles with mental health.

So yeah, maybe MLS is the best place for Lingard to rediscover himself and since this is his birthday, maybe we can hold off on judging him too harshly until we see what happens next.

Did he make questionable choices? Yes. Does he have to find his way back quickly? Absolutely, unless he wants to become one of football’s forgotten men. But he could play another five or six years if he really wants to.

The coming weeks will tell us more. It all comes down to Lingard’s priorities and that’s the biggest question when 31 is ultimately far too young for any player to talk about in the past tense.

(Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)