James Rodriguez - Is He Worth The Money?

James Rodriguez: The Messiah of Colombian football and the latest Real Madrid ‘Galactico’. But is he worth the Money?

After Rodriguez’s impressive displays at a quite incredible world cup, it seems that Real Madrid have made a very good signing albeit at the high price of £63million. It all seems as if it will work out; Rodriguez says it is his ‘dream move’ and Real Madrid now have completed their ‘dream team’, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, at AS Monaco, in Ligue 1, Rodriguez wasn’t delivering his world cup-esque displays week in week out but, fear not Real Madrid fans, you haven’t signed a bad player, it’s more that you may have overpaid for the highly-rated Colombian. Below compares his form in the 2013-14 season with AS Monaco and his World Cup 2014 performance:

	AS Monaco 2013-14	World Cup 2014
Appearances	34	5
Goals	9	6
Goals per min	293	67
Assists	12	2
Assists per match	0.35	0.33
Passing accuracy	81.5%	76.6%
Passes Per Match (90mins)	55.8	39.4
Shots Per Match	2.6	2.7
Man of the Match awards.	5	3

As you can see above James Rodriguez’s form in the world cup was predominantly superior to his form for his club side. However, Rodriguez is a very young player and constantly improving, he definitely has the potential to be one of the best, if not the best, in the world but, the key question is whether he will turn up in the big games and ‘deliver the goods’ when it matters? Or will the 23-year old flop under the overwhelming pressure of being a £63million signing and the latest ‘Galactico’?

Based on last season’s performance and the teams which he scored his nine goals against it makes it seem as if he doesn’t really turn up and ‘deliver the goods’ against the bigger teams and influence the more important games. He scored his nine goals against seven teams in last season’s Ligue 1 competition:

·      Rennes

·      Nice

·      Valenciennes

·      Bastia (2)

·      Olympique Lyonnais

·      Sochaux

·      Nantes (2)

Of the nine goals scored by the Colombian, only one was scored against a team in the top nine of the final table of Ligue 1 (Olympique Lyonnais) showing his lack of influence on the more important games.

Additionally, after world cups gone by, there have been many world cup ‘stars’ that aren’t always as they seem when the big teams pay an overpriced fee and the star can’t handle the expectation and justify the inflated price tag which they earned whilst overachieving and playing extraordinarily well at a world cup.

But, there are a select few who live up to their ‘world cup star’ status and inflated price tag.

Overall, I would conclude, and agree with most people in saying, that James Rodriguez is a terrific signing for Real Madrid but may find it difficult to justify his massive and maybe too high price tag as it seems to me that Real Madrid have just signed him based on his world cup performance, which consisted of a meagre five games.

It will obviously take a while for him to settle down and probably even take a while for him to start performing to the level he was consistently playing at in the world cup, but if he is helped, encouraged and developed in the correct way, I believe that slowly but surely he will live up to expectation and become the best of the best.

By @joelymo444