The Colombia international was once considered one of the best players on the planet, but is now a free agent having been released by Olympiacos
James Rodriguez is 31 years of age – and presently unemployed. After spending a year making money in Qatar, he essentially begged for a return to "elite football" last September – "Let’s see who wants my left foot again!" – and was taken on by Olympiacos, only to see his contract terminated after just seven months in Greece.
It's hard to know what to make of that, perhaps because it's long been difficult to know what to make of James, both as a player and a person.
Our entire perception of him is shaped by the summer of 2014, when he illuminated the World Cup in Brazil. He won the Golden Boot by scoring six times, but also won the hearts of football fans all across the globe. Even LeBron James was blown away by Colombia's new attacking sensation with the boyish good looks.
After the attacking midfielder had scored the goal of the tournament in the last-16 win over Uruguay, the NBA legend tweeted, "Man, watching this Colombian game, I think I have my fav (sic) player of the World Cup!"
Getty'Why can't he become the greatest?'
Even then-Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who was far more familiar with James, was "absolutely amazed by the quality of his performances" in Brazil.
"For me, it was the intelligence of his passing, the suppleness of him and the fluency of his game," the Frenchman told . "It also was the speed of his decision-making. The penetrative passes he made were just absolutely fantastic.
"You just wanted to see him have the ball and when you want somebody to have the ball, it is always a sign of exceptional quality. And he definitely has that."
Florentino Perez was just as smitten with James' heroics at the World Cup, so a move to Real Madrid inevitably followed. Superstar status beckoned.
"He's one of the best players in the world," James' childhood idol Carlos Valderrama enthused, "Why can't he become the greatest?"
AdvertisementGettyThe perfect 10
There was certainly nothing stopping him, at least in terms of talent. James was the perfect No.10; he had it all: outstanding technique, excellent vision and an explosive shot.
Perhaps even more importantly, he was intelligent.
"What is most surprising about James," Colombia boss Jose Pekerman explained in 2014, "is that in spite of his young age, he does not have any problem doing things that most football players take many years to understand."
Perhaps that shouldn't have been too surprising, though. After all, James was 22 at the time, yet he'd already been playing senior football for eight years, having made his debut for Envigado at just 14.
He'd also broken one record after another while helping Banfield win their first ever Argentine championship while still only a teenager, and then proven himself in Europe, first at Porto, and then Monaco.
This was a young man, then, with a hell of a lot of top-flight experience.
Perhaps his subsequent fitness issues were inevitable, then. Maybe the rigours of the professional game were always going to take their toll on someone who started so young.
James isn't a classic case of burnout, though. There have been other issues at play.
Getty'The boy isn't focused'
Injuries are often unfortunate, but sometimes they can be attributed to a failure to properly look after one's body, and James has faced accusations throughout his career that he lacks the requisite discipline for the very highest level of performance.
"The boy isn't focused," former Colombia national team doctor Hector Fabio Cruz told in 2019. "Instead of working for the new season, he went to fix his eyebrows and his hair while he should have been working.
"Big teams like Madrid expect professionalism, players who will be well-prepared, but this boy's attitude isn't right. A player who spends months away from the pitch and goes from club to club. But if he prepared properly, he wouldn't suffer any of this.
"Cristiano Ronaldo took a week of vacation [after the 2018 World Cup]. He went on a yacht with his family to Greece and then the following week he had 15 people preparing him for the season.
"He's the most professional guy I know. James, though, left the same World Cup injured, hired a private plane, went to the beach and relaxed. That can't be.
"I already predicted that things would go wrong for him because he doesn't work."
GettyA player from a different era
There have also been allegations that James doesn't work hard enough on the field either, which points to another problem.
James has always felt like something of a throwback, a player from a different era, one in which No.10s were the fulcrum of the attack, and shorn of any defensive duties.
Such freedom is no longer afforded to No.10s. One could even argue that the trequartista position no longer exists, or at the very least has been completely redefined.
It certainly feels indicative of a major tactical shift in the modern era that a coach like Zinedine Zidane, formerly one of the game's great attacking midfielders, could find no permanent place in his Real Madrid starting line up for what looked like a kindred spirit in James.
Were it not for Carlo Ancelotti, in fact, one wonders if James' time at the highest level would have actually ended a lot sooner.