Dear Cesc,
It’s been a long time since I erupted in joy after a sumptuous Arsenal goal involving you. More than 5 years now, to be exact. These 5 years have been like an eternity for someone to not be able to see his favourite player turn out for his favourite club.
In the meantime, I have jumped up in sheer joy every time I see you thread a pass through unsuspecting defenders to the likes of Messi, Neymar, Alexis and Hazard, allowing them to then work their own magic with the ball. This I have done despite the fact that I positively loathe the teams you’ve played for – Chelsea and Barcelona.
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I have carried on in the same vein for so long now that it has become more of a chore to watch you play for some other team than the painful sight that it initially was.
However, I think I’m not wrong to point out that you have not had the same individual success elsewhere as you did in your heyday at Arsenal. Hey, you’re still only 29, and I expect to watch you for many more years, but I’m left to wonder if you’ve ever looked back at your move from Arsenal with a slight tinge of regret.
Back in the day, when you inherited the reins of the Arsenal midfield from Patrick Vieira at the tender age of 18 following his move to Italy, many questions were raised as to whether Arsenal could cope with the loss of a leader and a dynamic figure like him. But Arsene Wenger kept the faith in you, allowing you to follow through in spectacular fashion.
Many of these questions were put to bed when you helped us knock out Vieira’s Juventus side in the Champions League quarterfinals that season. That, after knocking out Zidane’s Real in the Round of 16.
Whatever be the question, Arsenal would always have a rousing answer for the following 6 seasons. Never did we miss Vieira as much as one would expect – you made up for the lack of brawn with the same steely mentality, superior technique and an undying motor that kept you going at your best all season long.
Those years you spent with us when we made it so close, yet stopped so tantalisingly close to trophies and success were some of the best for me as a fan. I backed Arsenal to take on any side in the world, mainly because of your mercurial brilliance in central midfield.
I remember vividly the streak of 12 games in which you scored goals for us in early 2007-08, which was one of our most heartbreaking seasons.
I remember you taking the game by the scruff of the neck at the San Siro, scoring a belter past Dida from 30 yards out to give us that crucial away goal that led us to victory over the likes of Kaka, Pirlo and Nesta at their peak. I remember those memorable battles with Barcelona, when you played your heart out despite injury and helped us win at Emirates in a situation that most people wrote us off from.
And that is something that I feel you’ve lost as you moved from London to your hometown Barcelona. You, who outplayed the likes of Lampard, Gerrard and sometimes Scholesy at their peak, had to settle for the bench in Xavi’s place. Your perseverance and consistency were what prompted your worst career move – your experiments as a forward, sometimes even as a false no. 9 for both club and country.
Boy, oh boy! Wasn’t it pure madness to try and change a world-beater in the engine room and make him some sort of an auxiliary forward to score goals? Yet, you dove into it, and not even Barcelona fans can claim that you didn’t play to the best of your abilities – it wasn’t your fault that you got thrust into those roles at times.
With time, you began to take control of the Barcelona midfield, and I started to familiarize myself with the notion that you would spend the rest of your career there. Imagine my surprise, then, when Luis Enrique decided that a certain Ivan Rakitic was the future of his midfield instead of you – a La Masia graduate par excellence.
I will never understand why Barcelona thought they had a higher ceiling as a team without you in their midfield. There was nothing in your Barcelona tenure of your three years that could help anyone suggest, even jokingly, that your time at the club turned out to be a failure.
When Chelsea came calling, all Barcelona saw was the money they would get in the deal, and not the fact that they were losing a player who could run their midfield for years to come.
Instead of treating you like the prodigal son returned home, they decided that you were not worthy enough to be kept home regardless of the fact that you’d come to the club because it was your hometown, and because you wanted to be a Barcelona player. There were many rumoured comebacks to Arsenal brewing – Arsene did have the chance to sign you back from Barcelona, but in the 3 intervening years that you left, we had found ways of coping with the numerous departures we’d had.
Arsenal Football Club did not need you, but Jose Mourinho and Chelsea’s success mantra lured you to West London instead. You’ve had 2 contrasting seasons there, and again I pause to think whether finishing 10th in your only season as Premier League champion befits you as a player.
In the 5 years since you left the club, you have 2 league titles and 2 cup titles to show for it. In the same time, Arsenal has failed to win the league, and I suspect that your departure was the main reason. I’m sure Arsene must have tried to show you how good we would’ve become with you as the inspirational captain and technical genius running our midfield.
In my view, you failed to achieve the aims for which you left Arsenal, and Arsenal, in turn, failed to achieve what it could have with you. It was an avoidable scenario if only you’d had the faith to be a Gunner for a season or two longer, but bygones are bygones. We can only look to the future and hope that Cesc Fabregas becomes the player that he showed he could in his time at Arsenal.
And, of course, that this does not cost Arsenal any titles!
