Abhranil Roy
12 months ago, Manchester United signed Germany captain Bastian Schweinsteiger for £6.5million. The deal was considered to be the coup of the transfer window. Not a lot has gone well since then for the German, however, it has all gone wrong for him since then, and he has been nowhere close to the level expected of him. He arrived at Old Trafford, a year after putting in a man of the match performance in the World Cup final, which Germany won, and was thought to be the midfield general United needed badly. But he turned out to be more of a liability, as he made just 18 appearances, and just 4 in the last four months, as he struggled with injuries.
Even when he has played, he has looked completely out of sorts and is clearly not suited to the pace of the Premier League. He would often get caught in possession, and would slow United’s football down, as was visible in that humiliating 3-0 loss to Arsenal last season. He just didn’t have the legs he once used to own. Moreover, his activities off the pitch have reportedly not gone down well with either the players or the manager. His regular trips to Germany while injured reportedly ‘p****d off’ teammates. He would travel the world to watch his wife and tennis star, Ana Ivanovic play when he should have been working on his recovery at Carrington, putting his dedication and professionalism into question.
On top of all that, Schweinsteiger demands wages in excess of 200,000 pounds per week, and is thus, a heavy load on the wage bill. Omitted from the senior squad, Schweinsteiger spent his last week training with teenagers and trialists. This move has drawn a lot of criticism from most fans, who love the German legend, and Bayern CEO Karl Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the man who sold him to us claimed ‘players are going to think long and hard in future about whether they want to go to such a club. Nothing like that has ever happened at Bayern Munich.’
However, in my opinion, no player is bigger than the club and keeping that in mind, if a manager deems a player as a liability then there is no point in keeping him, no matter how big a player he may have been or how much the fans love him.
