There are labels in football that weigh a lot. Few like the one to have been the most expensive goalkeeper in football history. Chelsea paid 80 million euros for Kepa Arrizabalaga in 2018, six months after Zinedine Zidane stopped his signing for Real Madrid at the last minute, precisely the rival he faces this Wednesday in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals. He soon also appropriated the goal of the Spanish team, to the detriment of David de Gea. Still 23 years old, he seemed to be heading towards the status of a goalkeeper of the time. And yet…
At the beginning of 2020, 18 months after arriving at Stamford Bridge, his star went out. A very poor performance under the sticks and his lack of personal ‘feeling’ with his coach, Frank Lampardthe same one who has just retaken the reins of the team, caused him to be relegated to the bench, in favor of a very veteran Willy Caballero who had not played regularly for six seasons.
Also disappeared from the selection
Luis Enrique, given his lack of participation in his club, stopped counting on him in the selection. There was no confrontation with the coach or anything like that, as it did with other footballers who disappeared from the team, the Asturian simply decided to place his trust in a goalkeeper who did play for his club. He was unai simon who, curiously, was the one who relieved him in the Athletic goal when he headed for London.
Kepa had unexpectedly fallen into a football hole, From peak stardom to understudy for a peer on the verge of retirement in just a year and a half. From their environment they offered arguments of a personal nature that allowed contextualizing such an abrupt drop in performance.
Personal problems
The breakup with his longtime girlfriend, who had moved to London with him, affected him greatly. Also the departure of Álvaro Morata from the team, who had been his main support in the dressing room, as well as the departure of goalkeeper Sergio Rico from Fulham, his great friend in his first months in London. Your initial difficulties in speaking English fluently They were a major problem for him in his social relationships, as well as his residence: he chose to live in the Chelsea neighborhood while most of his teammates resided in Cobham, on the outskirts of the city, near the club’s sports complex.
Added to all this was a strained relationship with Lampard, a coach who was a club legend and who wanted to ‘rebritishize’ the squad. This caused the Latino nucleus of the locker room (with the exception of Azpilicueta and Jorginho) to be displaced and lose prominenceespecially due to the tensions caused by the way in which Lampard showed David Luiz the exit door of the club, in the summer of 2019.
The English coach told Kepa to his face that I did not count on him for the 2020/21 season and that the best thing was to find a team. “But Kepa has a high opinion of himself and he was not willing to go to any club to play more. If he did go out, it had to be to another top European club. The problem was that, with his salary and his performance in the In previous months, no offer of these characteristics came up, although he moved to look for it”, explains someone who knows him very well.
psychological help
Kepa was aware that he needed psychological help and put himself in the hands of professionals, while Chelsea signed Edouard Mendy to be the team’s starting goalkeeper. In January 2021, the English club closed Lampard’s stage and opted for Thomas Tuchel, but the German coach also opted for the French goalkeeper as a starter, keeping Kepa on the bench.
During that time, having overcome his breakup with his former partner, the Basque goalkeeper began a relationship with another girl with whom he will marry in the coming months. The couple themselves announced their engagement last September. “It was very bad to be alone, in a very large apartment for only one person. Her partner is a wonderful girl who has allowed her to recover her peace of mind to be able to work on recovering her level,” they explain from her environment.
His increased command of English contributed to improve your social relationships and expand your circle of friends. However, he was still tied to the bench. Everything changed when, in September of this year, Chelsea fired Thomas Tuchel. The English Graham Potter replaced him in charge and one of his first decisions was to promote the relief in goal. Two and a half years later, Kepa was once again a starter at Chelsea.
excellent performance
“It was the award for the faith he has in himself and all the mental work he did to recover his maximum level,” they say from his surroundings. The data supports his good performance under sticks: it is the second goalkeeper in the Premier League with the fewest goals conceded per game (0.88), the third in percentage of saves (76.5%) and also the third in percentage of games with a clean sheet (40.9%). Numbers that have also helped Luis de la Fuente, who met him more than a decade ago in the Athletic youth academy, when he was a promising cadet, bet on him as the national team’s starting goalkeeper.
Now it remains to be seen what happens in a Chelsea that is having a bad season in the Premier, where he is eleventh, 17 points behind the Champions League places. Lampard has returned as a temporary solution and in his first game he kept his trust in Kepa. It is also foreseeable that he will do so this Wednesday at the Santiago Bernabéu and there do not seem to be sporting arguments for that decision to be altered in the remainder of the season.
“He’s had a really bad time, but he’s pulled through and now he’s reaping the rewards”, they sentence from their environment. The most expensive goalkeeper in the history of football smiles again.