The talent of Real Madrid and Barcelona that is now without a club

Thursday, December 30, 2021 at 01:00• Rian Rosendaal • Last update: 21:54

In the section ‘Forgotten Footballers’, Voetbalzone regularly reflects on a player who, despite the high expectations, has slowly fallen into oblivion. This time the focus is on Iago Falque, who in his younger years was part of the youth academy of both Real Madrid and Barcelona and was considered a great talent at the time. However, a permanent place in the forefront of one of the Spanish superpowers was never possible for the Vigo-born wing attacker. Falque has now passed his thirties and the veteran has been waiting for a new club since the final day of the summer transfer window.

If it is Falque (31) his career will not be ended in the short term, despite the fact that he has not practiced the profession of professional football player on a daily basis for several months. At the beginning of December, it was revealed that the naturally left-footed attacker had signed up for the Spanish fourth division team Compostela. The club, which was active in LaLiga for several seasons in the 1990s, announced via a message on Twitter that it was happy with the trial period of the clubless winger. “A new training session in preparation for the derby with Arosa SC!!! And Iago Falque was also present during this training!!!”, the social media manager of Compostela wrote on December 2 with the necessary exclamation marks. The son of Galicia had returned to the northwest of Spain after wandering in the Premier League and Serie A, where he saw the light of day on January 4, 1990 in Vigo.

Famous teammates who did succeed at Barcelona
How different the situation was for Falque more than two decades ago. At the turn of the century, the world lay at the feet of the still very young wing attacker and the top clubs seemed to be choosing for the then ten-year-old Spaniard. Real, where star players like Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo and Brazil’s Ronaldo delighted fans at the Santiago Bernabéu fortnightly 20 years ago, was Falque’s first stop on his way to hopefully a career at the very top. Despite the sporting ambitions, football life in the Spanish capital did not last long.

The next stop was La Masia, Barcelona’s world-famous youth academy. Falque could be admired in Barca colors for a total of seven years and was eventually included in the B-team led by Josep Guardiola in the 2007/08 season. The starting coach, who would later experience so many successes with the main force of the Catalans, had a great group of up and coming talents at his disposal. Sergio Busquets, Thiago Alcántara and Pedro Rodríguez, among others, were Falque’s teammates in Barcelona-B. The winger, usually operating from the right, ultimately did not follow the same path as the three aforementioned players who did break through in the Barcelona first team.

After just one game and one goal in Barcelona’s B-team just before Christmas 2007, the club-player marriage came to an end in mid-2008. For Falque, his departure from La Masia unintentionally marked the beginning of a life as a football nomad. Despite the fact that he still had to prove himself at the very highest level, a lucrative four-year contract with Juventus was ready for him. The agreement included the stipulation that the Turin club would have to transfer €2.5 million to Barcelona for a certain number of matches and goals by the winger. However, that sum never ended up in the bank account in Spain, because La Vecchia Signora breaking through turned out to be a utopia for Falque.

Juventus kept hopes and sent the Barcelona-trained player to Bari and Villarreal in succession. Unfortunately, history repeated itself for Falque, because playing in the B-team was also the highest attainable at these clubs. He took a completely different path after the 2010/11 season with the temporary choice for Tottenham Hotspur, which decided to take him over from Juventus during the winter break of that year. Transfer fee: converted only one million euros. Then manager Harry Redknapp did not want to throw the mercenary right in the deep end and therefore sent him to his old employer Southampton, to let the acquisition get used to the physical football that is usually played in the English Championship.

Falque was able to add another disappointment in Southampton in his still fledgling career outside the Spanish borders. The striker on loan from Tottenham made his debut with a 56-minute appearance against Leicester City. After his baptism of fire, however, remarkably enough, there was not a single minute of playing at the club from southern England. A swift return to North London was therefore inevitable. Falque’s only appearance in the Premier League came in December 2012, a year and a half after his entry at White Hart Lane. The competition eventually turned out to be too great for the somewhat stolid mercenary. His ball control and dribbling were fine, according to several connoisseurs of English football, but the end product was unfortunately far too meagre. His actions on the right wing rarely, if ever, yielded anything to Tottenham and the discontent among his fellow players and the supporters did not disappear at a certain point. It was therefore no coincidence that Redknapp and his successors André Villas-Boas and Tim Sherwood never saw a basic player in Falque for the Spurs.

Former teammates Pedro and Sergio Busquets broke through at Barcelona.

Did you leave for England too early?
In 2018, the self-critical Falque admitted that in his early twenties he might not have chosen Tottenham. “In retrospect, that choice may have been the wrong one,” he told the Italian media a few years after his departure from England. “That was the only step back in my career. But less good experiences also help you grow and mature. At that time, signing with Tottenham seemed best to me, even though the competition was huge there. Now I think the sporty aspect, for example “Much more important than the financial picture. Money only matters later, the games, goals and good performances come first. Regret is not the right word, because at Tottenham I have become a mature player.”

While employed by the London club, Falque made trips to Almería and Rayo Vallecano. It is nevertheless not in Spain, but in Italy that the former youth player of Real and Barcelona clearly gave his career a new impulse. Genoa took the risk in 2014 with the then 25-year-old attacker and under the inspiring leadership of Gian Piero Gasperini, Falque increasingly showed why he was once described as a ‘prodigy’ in Spain. The coach who would later surprise with Atalanta in the Champions League let him excel as a right winger in a 3-4-3 system. 13 goals in 32 Serie A matches and the necessary rave reviews earned him a top transfer to AS Roma.

The choice for Roma seemed to be a step up in all respects, but Falque once again had to swallow a sporting disappointment in the Stadio Olimpico. He was never able to match the form from his short period at Genoa, with the reunion with Barcelona being the absolute low point of the rather disappointing year in Rome. In the group stage of the Champions League, Roma lost no less than 6-1 in November 2015 against the club that managed to conquer the ‘cup with the big ears’ earlier that year. Falque didn’t play at all on the left wing against the tireless right-back Dani Alves. After the humiliation at the Camp Nou, a striking statistic was pointed out: only 59 percent of his passes arrived. In addition, the multifunctional attacker killed one of the few real opportunities for Roma.

Goal showed no mercy for Falque and included him in that week’s ‘Champions League squad of failures’. Memphis Depay, who was unable to convince Louis van Gaal of his qualities in Manchester United’s home game against PSV (0-0), according to the players report, was also in the vanguard. The technical leadership knew enough after a season and sent Falque to Torino with a rental deal. There he lasted two seasons in a row at the same club for the first time, already the ninth in his sometimes turbulent professional life. After a successful debut year, with the title club top scorer in his pocket because of his fourteen goals, the brilliance also quickly disappeared from Juventus’ fellow townsman. After a short-lived return to Genoa and eleven duels for Benevento, Torino knew enough in August 2021. A new contract for Falque was certainly not forthcoming.

Iago Falque in action against AC Milan on behalf of Benevento, the last club he served.

The decision to end the partnership is in stark contrast to the situation in the early months of the 2017/18 season. In that season, Falque regularly formed a successful attacking duo in Serie A with captain Andrea Belotti. In the Torino shirt, Belotti even made it to the international position of European champions Italy. His Spanish attacking partner felt like a fish in water and Falque set the bar high for himself. “The coming seasons could be the best four years of my career. Belotti is a great player who always keeps the peace. A great player who I trust blindly. All of that is really crucial for the future of Torino. Renewing my contract (until 2021, ed.) is about the same as finishing my career at this club.” Falque, in all his ambitions, even dreamed aloud of being called up to the Spanish national team. He had played almost every youth team in Spain in his younger years, but playing time in the A-team did not come after that. “Playing for my country is and remains my goal”, the 1.74 meter long attacker said confidently in the autumn of 2018.

Three years after that ambitious statement, with Falque close to his 32nd birthday, it seems highly unlikely that Spain’s national coach Luis Enrique will send an invitation in the run-up to the World Cup in Qatar. Top priority for the veteran in 2022 will be finding a new club. Falque has at times shown that he can be of value to a club with attacking intentions, although according to many that happened too little to really talk about a successful career. Despite this, the sometimes erratic attacker scored 97 goals and 48 assists in 352 games during his football journey through Europe. The question now is which club in Spain or abroad will give him a chance for one last trick at a professional level.