While I was tempted to find a post from 2009 that would work for this one, I’m going to have a crack at giving the ‘Giovani Dos Santos is out of shape’ story a new twist. Because apparently, the Mexican international is still nowhere near his peak condition, with his new manager (Mallorca’s Joaquin Caparros) euphemistically saying the 23-year-old needs to get “leaner” to increase his “explosiveness.”
I know. I’m totally shocked by this news, too.
For every second of his professional career, Dos Santos has needed to get leaner to increase explosiveness. Most people have saved their breath and just called him out of shape. While he’s obviously improved his fitness over the last two years (no longer showing up for international duty visibly overweight), his fitness is clearly not up to his coach’s standards.
In fairness, it is a high standard, though it’s one you accept by being a professional soccer player. You find very few perpetually out of shape footballers. The game is far too demanding to play with marginal fitness, particularly at Premier League and La Liga levels.
Ever since moving to Tottenham Hotspur from Barcelona in 2008, the attacker has failed to give himself the best chance of earning playing time. Bolstered by occasional spectacular performances for Mexico, Dos Santos has been given reason to believe he doesn’t need to be in prime condition to contribute. That approach might work in CONCACAF, but it’s not good enough for England or Spain, part of the reason he made only 31 all-competition appearances for Spurs before being sold to Mallorca.
Thus far, Dos Santos has only made three appearances for Mallorca, though he showed his potential value in creating two goals earlier this year against Sevilla. Since, injuries have kept him from contributing regularly, and if you read between the Spanish lines of Caparros’s comments, you see see concern that Dos Santos’s lack of fitness is contributing to his slow recovery.
At some point, though, this annual “Gio’s out of shape” revelation becomes a non-story. It’s relevant now because Dos Santos just moved to Mallorca, was supposed to have a new start, and was going to show Spurs had been sitting on a gem. Perhaps predictably, it took only a few months to be reminded Dos Santos’s problems transcend Tottenham.
He is the most talented player in CONCACAF, and over the last few years, Dos Santos has also been the region’s best player. But success at club level demands more than the short bursts needed to succeed on the international stage.
Only 23, he still has time to adapt, but in the seventh year of his professional career, Dos Santos may just be what he is. We talk as if his fitness issues are inhibiting his potential, but maybe this is his potential. Maybe Dos Santos is destined to be a hypothetical.
