Saido Berahino’s decline is a sad symbol of Stoke’s struggles
It will be three years ago come June that an injured Saido Berahino withdrew from the England Under-21s’ European Championships squad on the eve of the first game against Portugal, replaced in the team by a 22-year-old Jesse Lingard, who had yet to make an impression at Manchester United.
When England went out of the competition three games later, a crestfallen Gareth Southgate looked back on the withdrawal of Berahino, and a concussion sustained by defender John Stones, as the turning point for his team.
Harry Kane might have been the biggest name in that Under-21s squad with a senior cap and a senior goal already, but Berahino, the younger of the two strikers by just seven days, had earned his call-up to a senior England squad four months earlier than Kane.
Three years on and it feels unkind to compare their careers now: at his height Berahino came very close to being Kane’s team-mate at Spurs in the summer of 2016, although that is one deal Daniel Levy will be delighted he never closed. Berahino’s decline, through a failed drugs test and the subsequent collapse of his form at Stoke City has been one of the English game’s saddest stories, right up to the point where Paul Lambert has had to exclude him from the first-team squad for turning up late.
Berahino has famously not scored a senior goal for more than two years, going back to Feb 27, 2016, and encompassing 44 appearances for West Bromwich Albion and then Stoke. The most awkward part of it at Stoke’s Clayton Wood training ground was not only his failure to notch a single goal on match day but that he had hardly ever scored in training, either.
If ever there was a symbol of the wider decline at Stoke, facing a game tomorrow against West Ham that they dare not lose, then it is Berahino, all at sea andturning up late for Under-23s training yet still with four years left on a £75,000-a-week contract. On Monday, Stoke will be fighting for their Premier League lives but as things stand, that evening Berahino is scheduled to play for the Under-23s against Brighton.
His signing was a gamble taken by Mark Hughes that backfired spectacularly, although when it comes to Stoke’s bigger problems, it can be hard to separate those that should be laid at the door of the club’s technical director, Mark Cartwright, or their former manager.
Cartwright is a former goalkeeper with Wrexham, among others, who previously worked for the football agency Beswicks, and in signing their star client Jack Butland he has at least ensured there will be some saleable assets if the club go down. Cartwright is understood to have opposed some of Stoke’s recent signings, including the £18 million Kevin Wimmer, although Stoke’s recent record demonstrates just how hard they have found it to navigate the European market, buying and loaning players who have been wholly unsuitable.
Leave a Reply