Javier Manquillo Needs a Loan Move, but Atletico Madrid Must Find the Right Club
Because of the nature of the job at the highest level, footballers can often be seen to have achieved a lot in a short space of time without actually achieving anything at all.
Players in their teens and early 20s will be rewarded with lucrative moves and contracts based purely on potential and not what they’ve done on the first-team pitch, so they can often get lost in a state of curious unfulfillment as supporters wait to see what all the fuss is about.
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This is where Javier Manquillo comes in.
Having only turned 22 in May, the Spanish full-back—capped by his country at every level from under-16s to under-21s—has a CV that features Atletico Madrid, Liverpool and Olympique de Marseille, three clubs the vast majority of professional footballers would be desperate to play for. But what has he achieved with any of them?
Manquillo finds his career at a curious crossroads this summer, with little to no sign of him forcing his way into boss Diego Simeone’s first-team plans at Atletico.
Still without a squad number for the new campaign, the right-back has seen his club sign a new player—the Croatian Sime Vrsaljko—in his position this summer, while the long-serving Juanfran continues to retain the trust of both his manager and the fans. Indeed, he was Spain’s right-back at Euro 2016.
So the chances of Manquillo leapfrogging both his country’s best player in his position and a man freshly signed to compete for the role at his club are slim to none, meaning he is going to have to leave the Estadio Vicente Calderon for a third time in as many summers to progress. The key now, though, is to learn from those previous two moves.
Neither one was the best move for the player or his parent club, leaving Manquillo almost in a state of stunted growth as he waits to kick on.
Back in 2014, there were plenty of reasons why a two-year loan stint at Liverpool looked appealing.
The Reds had just finished second in the Premier League and were playing a thrilling brand of football under manager Brendan Rodgers, even if much of that had been taken away by the sale of Luis Suarez to Barcelona.
In Manquillo’s position, there was the erstwhile England full-back Glen Johnson, who never truly convinced Reds fans, and the academy product Jon Flanagan, a breakout star of the previous campaign but who would become susceptible to serious injury.
Opportunities abounded, then, and Manquillo started off fairly well.
He impressed on his debut in a win at home to Southampton, and he earned rave reviews for a fine display in a 3-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur at the end of August.
In September, and showing his liberal attacking intent, his stoppage-time foray toward the Kop penalty area drew a stoppage-time spot-kick—converted bySteven Gerrard—to win a Champions League game at home to the Bulgarians Ludogorets Razgrad. For a player who had only featured nine times for Atletico over the previous two seasons, it was all great experience.
And with Johnson seen to be running down his contract and Flanagan injured, Manquillo was fairly popular, but as results began to go against Liverpool and Rodgers, he was seen as a fairly easy target.
The Northern Irishman chopped and changed both personnel and his formation in a desperate bid to rediscover the previous season’s highs, eventually settling on a system of three centre-backs, which shut out Manquillo. The Spaniard was involved in 16 games in 2014, but in 2015, he played in just three—two in the FA Cup and one as a substitute in a Europa League defeat to Besiktas.
He hadn’t done much wrong; he was just seen as expendable for a club such as Liverpool who were operating with high expectations, not living up to them and desperately trying to put that right. The two-year loan was cancelled after one, and Manquillo was pretty much forgotten about on Merseyside.
So it was onto another loan deal for 2015/16, with Atletico finding him a home in France’s Ligue 1 this time around.
Again, on paper, Marseille looked to be an exciting club to join. They had finished in the top four the previous season under the stewardship of the venerable Marcelo Bielsa, and they offered Manquillo an opportunity to further his game in a stimulating environment. Then it all started to go wrong.
Bielsa resigned at the start of the season, and his replacement, the former Real Madrid midfielder Michel, got off to a poor start and never properly recovered.
Marseille spent the campaign hovering up and down the bottom half of the table, settling in a deeply below-par 13th. Manquillo featured frequently, if not exactly impressively, in spells on both the right and left side of the defence.
He played in 37 games across all competitions, which is 37 games he wouldn’t have got had he stayed in Madrid, but the experience seemed to be far from pleasurable, and he was never likely to turn his loan move into a permanent deal, leaving just after Michel at the tail end of the campaign.
Which brings us to now, and as Manquillo looks out over the Atletico Madrid’s Ciudad Deportiva training complex and sees both Juanfran and Vrsaljko, he must be wondering what his next move is.
It must be tempting to sever all ties with Atletico, but you get the impression that neither the player nor the club wants that. He is, after all, a highly promising defender and is still young.
Another loan move would benefit him, but crucially, he and Atletico have to get this one right.
Whereas Liverpool and Marseille were two clubs striving to play a certain way and then taking measures to put right various wrongs, perhaps Manquillo would benefit from joining a club that has its sights set a little lower? In a side scrapping for every point it could earn, his defensive skills would be honed, meaning he’d eventually improve that side of his game.
A recent report in Corriere dello Sport (h/t Football Italia) linked him with a move to Napoli, but that wouldn’t fit what he needs. The same story suggested Sassuolo—Vrsaljko’s former club—are also interested. That might work a little better.
Indeed, Italy would seem to be the logical next step in a nomadic young career that seems to be destined to be the subject of future quiz questions given he’s already played in England and France.
How long he plays in Spain is up to Atletico, but after a couple of unfortunate seasons, both they and Manquillo need this next move to be the right one if he’s ever going to tap into a potential the Colchoneros clearly think he has.
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