Ruben the Rossonero: Loftus-Cheek at AC Milan
Ruben the Rossonero: Loftus-Cheek at AC Milan
After two decades at Chelsea, Ruben Loftus-Cheek has found a new home
Something finally seems to be shifting back in favour of decency in football's fight against racists among its own.
More than one match in the English Football League was delayed on Saturday as players, managers and officials discussed instances of alleged racism from members of the crowd.
This is happening week after week, and now more than once in a day. Stopping matches so regularly because of individual incidents in crowds of thousands is highlighting the problem, signalling that it's being taken seriously and embarrassing the sport.
It seems to me that it's exactly what we need.
Ruben the Rossonero: Loftus-Cheek at AC Milan
At the age of 22, Lewisham-born Ruben Loftus-Cheek was named in Gareth Southgate’s England squad for FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia. With ten minutes left of the opening fixture against Tunisia in Volgograd and England in need of a goal to secure a late win, Southgate turned to Loftus-Cheek.
The young Londoner came off the bench to replace Dele Alli, winning his fifth international cap in the process. England got their goal and Loftus-Cheek started the next two group games against Panama and Belgium. He then embarked upon his best Premier League season to date, playing under Maurizio Sarri for Chelsea.
2018/19 was the fulfilment of Loftus-Cheek’s Chelsea destiny. He’d been at Stamford Bridge since he was eight years old and spent ten years working his way up the youth ranks – winning the FA Youth Cup twice – and into the first team. He made his debut late in 2014 but barely played as the Blues won the title in 2016/17.
He was loaned to Crystal Palace in the following season and played his way into the England reckoning thanks to an impressive Premier League campaign. After the World Cup he was even better, this time for Sarri’s Chelsea. They won the UEFA Europa League, beating Arsenal in the final. Two weeks before the London derby in Baku, Loftus-Cheek ruptured his Achilles tendon.
He hasn’t played for England since. At club level, his rehabilitation has been less than ideal. After fighting his way back to fitness and making a handful of Chelsea appearances, he went back out on loan to Fulham in 2020/21.
Just like Palace, Fulham seemed to be the making of him. Amid the reliably frenetic doings behind the scenes at Chelsea, Loftus-Cheek dragged himself back into the team. In the two seasons after he returned from Craven Cottage, he played 49 league games. Then he left.
Prior to his injury, the former Chelsea junior had attracted enormous attention as a potential star. As he grew into his career, he started to build a fearsome reputation as a promising and imposing all-round midfielder – imperfect, certainly, but a thoroughly exciting prospect for club and country.
Early assessments from the kind of people who’d know focused often on his maturity. Loftus-Cheek quickly looked assured; his composure on the ball and elegance of movement without it were matched by a rangy physicality and an attacking threat that came to the fore in Chelsea’s successful Europa League campaign.
When considering Loftus-Cheek’s spluttering progress at Stamford Bridge since his injury in May 2019, the inability of a series of managers to unlock or even understand that offensive edge is undoubtedly an important factor. He struggled to crack the first team. When he did, the array of positions he filled weren’t conducive to getting in the box and making things happen.
Though widely recognised as a talented player, Loftus-Cheek was a square peg in a round hole more often than not by the end of 2022/23. He was good. He was respected. At 27, he still had his peak ahead of him. But he was stuck.
The saving grace was that Loftus-Cheek only had a year left on his contract and he was snapped up for a reported fee of around £15 million by AC Milan, following in the footsteps of Jimmy Greaves and his own former Chelsea team-mate, Fikayo Tomori, in making the move from West London to San Siro. Ray Wilkins was another former Chelsea player who played for the Rossoneri, whose other English alumni are Luther Blissett, Mark Hateley and David Beckham.
Loftus-Cheek signed a four-year contract and, after a positive start to life in Serie A under Stefano Pioli, he was interviewed by La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“At Chelsea I felt like a caged animal,” he said. “I didn’t play as much as I wanted and when it happened I played in positions where I couldn’t express myself. Here, however, I have a free mind. I play as a midfielder as I like, and it’s like being a child again.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to read a depth of frustration and a degree of sadness into his comments, and you don’t have to peel away too many layers to understand that Chelsea’s changing ownership, ludicrous shopping sprees and a succession of managerial lurches from this to that and back again might not make for the best club for a player with his own challenges to overcome.
The sample size is still small but the early evidence suggests that Italy looks good on Loftus-Cheek. Pioli is unlocking his ability and Milan's system taps into both the attacking side of his game – not every Chelsea manager he's had tried to do that consistently – and his effectiveness out of possession. It might as well have been drawn up with Loftus-Cheek in mind.
He can look back on January 2024 as one of the finest months of his career. As well as making himself indispensable through his all-round play, he scored four goals in four games including both in a bonkers 2-2 draw against Bologna. A happy knack for being in the right spot for a tap-in or two is a considerable boon.
At the time of writing, Loftus-Cheek has started 16 matches in Serie A and made three appearances off the bench. He's only started more in a full season three times: his two loan seasons and last season at Chelsea. He will pass each of those tallies imminently.
Five goals (all recent) and two assists (both early in the season) is a respectable enough league return for an all-round midfielder. The timing suggests better to come. Indeed, his 0.36 goals per 90 minutes is higher than all but 2018/19 when he was at the peak of his powers at Stamford Bridge.
That was his best season statistically in a number of regards but Loftus-Cheek's first order of business isn't to scale new heights, just revisit the old one. 2018/19 is the closest match for what he's doing in Milan and, after more than four years, a bad injury and shoddy management, it's starting to look like one hell of a comeback.
He only outscored his expected goals once in the Premier League – curiously, his xG is essentially the same in Serie A as his Premier League average – and that was in his best season at Chelsea. He's outscoring it again now.
He's shooting more than he has in most seasons but he's passing less, a function of his more advanced position and licence to attack. Indeed, his pass completion rate is good but no better than it was in England; he's always been a highly competent footballer.
Loftus-Cheek isn't in the form of his life. To suggest he is would be reductive and a little disrespectful to Chelsea, to Palace, to Fulham, and to the man himself. But he is starting to recapture it. Statistically, it's all going fine. He's passing the eye test too.
Now 28, Loftus-Cheek is a senior player. New club or not, he's expected to be a leader on the pitch. He expects it of himself too, and it was the focus of his comments when he agreed the move to San Siro.
“I understand the weight of the shirt and my responsibility coming into this club,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of experience in football and I can use that. I feel ready and good physically to produce performances for the team, and I’m ready to be a leader.”
“I was happy playing for my boyhood club but I didn’t really feel content with how much I was contributing to the team. I feel like I have more to give so I thought it was a good time to make a fresh start.”
So far, it’s going to plan – at least on an individual level. Milan are still working their way out of a lengthy spell of volatility in their fortunes. First- and second-placed finishes haven’t been beyond them of late but nor have they been anything like guaranteed.
Loftus-Cheek has played his part in Milan’s place in an historically familiar top three at the time of writing, albeit with the Rossoneri realistically looking in on the Scudetto race from the outside.
He’s got a few years to make his mark. If his first half a season is anything to go by, Loftus-Cheek is more than capable of making a great success of his time in Serie A and Milan will count him as a smart buy.
Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
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“They will make a film about this one day. The boy who joined Manchester United a few months after leaving an orphanage. The man who learned to deal with scorn and use it to make himself a career.
“The kid who was abandoned by his parents who became an international footballer and thus reconnected with them. The island nation who rose out of nowhere to become someone. Bebe will be a protagonist in Cape Verde’s story or it a protagonist in his.”
My great chum Daniel Storey is in the Ivory Coast at the moment to cover the latter stages of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations. On the way, he wrote this about Cape Verde’s former Manchester United man Bebe.
Salty beef extracts
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The non-league club soaring to promotion under Gareth Southgate’s best friend (i)
Premier League at risk of civil war after Everton and Nottingham Forest charges (i)
Chaos reigns and ref fights back as Ivory Coast reach home Afcon semi-final (i)
Why AFCON and the Asian Cup Matter (Football Paradise)
Darren Moore sacked as Huddersfield Town boss: reaction (We Are Terriers)
A Story of Footballs in 30 Episodes, Part Two (Unexpected Delirium)
Mission impossible (The Football Fan)
Super Sunday drowning in Peter Drury’s scripted whimsy and maelstrom of awfulness (Football365)
Dessert
Meet the adidas Predator 24 (laced, laceless and, er, laced) in the all-white colourway of the Pearlised Pack.
I’m going to need a minute.
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