On March 25, Renato Sanches will mark his first year as a senior international. Since he made his debut for Portugal, the prizes have come to him at a cascade.
A European champion with his country last July; a bonanza transfer whose fee may soon rise to a level that makes him Bayern Munich most expensive recruit ever; the Golden Boy award for the best young player in Europe.
Renato won that bauble well ahead of time, presented with it two months after he had turned 19. Candidates for an honour previously bestowed on Lionel Messi and Paul Pogba, among others, are eligible up to the age of 21.
It is conceivable Renato might achieve enough over the coming months that The Golden Boy’s jury wonder if he might look better than all rivals next time around, too. But that is unlikely.
Compared with his magnificent breakthrough season in 2015-2016, his current campaign has been a struggle.
When Bayern announced last spring they had signed Renato, the athletic, powerful and adventurous midfielder with the distinctive braids and apparent fearlessness, their own fans had little doubt it was a coup.
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Reanto had played with distinction in a Uefa Champions League quarter-final against the German club, his Benfica narrow losers over two legs. It scarcely seemed credible he had only made his debut for Benfica’s first team that October, that this all-terrain tyro was just 18 years old.
The fee? Close to €30 million (Dh118.8m) initially sounded steep, although next to the sums committed by, say, Manchester United on a pair of previous Golden Boys, Pogba and Anthony Martial, less so.
Bayern’s investment will rise according to targets and it is reliably reported that one of those, worth another €10m, will be triggered when he plays his 25th match for the Bundesliga champions.
Renato is still five games short of that. He was watched more football than he has played in Germany, although he has been encouraged to hope that the suspension that keeps Arturo Vidal out of Bayern’s midfield for Sunday’s visit to Borussia Monchengladbach might open up an opportunity. Starts are becomingly frustratingly scarce. He has completed 90 minutes just once for his new club, made the XI only seven times across competitions.
“Things are not going as I expected,” Renato told the Portuguese newspaper Record earlier this month.
Bayern’s manager Carlo Ancelotti picked him to start four of the first six matches of the league campaign, but his role since has been, mostly, as a substitute and sometimes he has not even been on the bench.
Ancelotti sought to sooth the player’s anxieties during the winter break by saying: “I am sure the second half of the season will go better for him. He’s only young and has come to a new club, and had to speak a new language.”
Renato’s grasp of spoken German, by his own admission, is sketchy. What he did understand, loud and clear, were the bold assertions earlier this week from the Bayern chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge that there will soon be a clear spot in midfield that is Renato’s to seize. Xabi Alonso, 35, has announced he will retire in June.
“What we want is for Renato to follow in Xabi’s footsteps,” Rummenigge said. “That’s why we bought him.”
Whether Renato can develop the passing accuracy perfected over the years by Xabi remains to be seen.
His difficulty is that in many of the positions he has the capacity to master, Bayern have plenty of cover. Renato can play wide, and has the ball-control and speed for it, but counts Arjen Robben, Franck Ribery, Douglas Costa and Kingsley Coman as teammates.
In the heart of midfield, the worldly Vidal and Alonso are trusted by Ancelotti; Thiago Alcantara, meanwhile, has had a dynamic season at the attacking point of central midfield.
The Golden Boy is not grumbling, at least not publicly, and he is hardly alone for feeling underused. Even Thomas Muller, Bayern-bred club favourite, has a weakened grip on a first-team place now Thiago is thriving, while Joshua Kimmich, feted last season, has voiced his concerns about a lack of action. And Mario Gotze, Europe’s Golden Boy of 2011, left Bayern after three unfulfilling seasons last summer, passing the incoming ‘Renato The Revelation’ on his way out.
Player of the week: Gael Kakuta, Deportivo La Coruna
Juan Herrero / EPA
His name was once shorthand for aggressive poaching by big clubs at the expense of smaller ones. In his teens, Carlo Ancelotti described the winger as “the future of Chelsea”. Still only 25 now, he has lived through many twists and turns in his career, which this weekend sees him preparing for a Galacian derby, against Celta Vigo, with his 10th club as a senior professional, Deportivo La Coruna.
Transfer outcry
Kakuta, born in Lille, France to a family with a Congolese background, was a talent on the books of Lens when Chelsea recruited him aged 16. Lens protested to Fifa he had been ‘tapped up’ in contravention of the game’s regulations. Chelsea were initially banned from transfer activities, though later cleared of wrongdoing on appeal.
Fame and frustration
So Kakuta became a household name more for that controversy than for what he did on the big stage. But his talent was exceptional — named Player of the Tournament when France won the 2010 European Under-19 championship. He made his full Chelsea debut that season, and winning the praise of Ancelotti, the then manager.
Loan ranger
As any number of young players at Stamford Bridge would testify, breaking into the Chelsea side is tough. He became one of the club’s many loanees, hired out again and again. First stop: Up the road at Fulham, then Bolton Wanderers.
Perpetual motion
Between January 2011 and the summer of 2014, when he turned 23, Kakuta was on the books of six different clubs in four countries. He managed a full season and a half with Vitesse Arnhem in the Netherlands. Stints at Dijon in France, Lazio in Italy and at Fulham and Bolton were six-month gigs.
Spanish stability
Chelsea had no spot for him. Finally, he found a place to play for a full uninterrupted year, La Liga’s Rayo Vallecano. The Spanish game seemed to suit him. Sevilla, Europa League holders, signed him, this time not on loan. That spell lasted ... yes, for his standard half a season.
China syndrome
Kakuta moved to China’s lucrative league just over a year ago. Then new restrictions on foreign players there obliged him to pack his suitcase once more. He is at Deportivo on loan from Hebei China Fortune, has served two head coaches already at the Galician club, but goes into Sunday’s derby buoyed by last weekend’s win over Barcelona. Things are looking up on the international front, too. After dozens of youth caps for France, Kakuta has committed to representing DR Congo. He could make his Congo debut next weekend.
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