Six big-name players who never truly recovered from an ACL injury: Rodri next?

Manchester City midfielder Rodri is back, but it’s been a struggle this season for him to get back to the Ballon d’Or-worthy form he was capable of at his best. Some are questioning whether he’ll ever reach those levels again.

Xavi, Robert Pires, Virgil van Dijk, Ruud van Nistelrooy are among countless examples of players who went on to come back better than ever after a lengthy ACL lay-off, but some footballers aren’t quite so fortunate.

We’ve taken a look at six players who were never the same after suffering an ACL injury.

Ronaldo Nazario

On the one hand, Ronaldo’s boasts one of football’s ultimate comeback stories.

Winning the World Cup, the Golden Boot and the Ballon d’Or in 2002 was a life-affirming riposte to the double injury hell he suffered at the turn of the century at Inter.

The Brazilian icon made a Galactico move to Real Madrid that summer and enjoyed a fine debut season, firing them in the La Liga title in 2002-03 and scoring that hat-trick at Old Trafford.

While he made the most of the latter half of his career, he was never quite the same player as his pre-injury days. There might never have been a more dynamic, unstoppable force of nature than the 20-year-old Ronaldo at Barcelona in 1996-97.

Michael Owen

Owen’s defining weapon as a youngster was his acceleration. That goal against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup was all about his devastating turn of pace.

The striker dealt with setbacks in his younger days, having suffered from several muscular injuries, but he kicked on to shine as Liverpool won three trophies in 2001. He won the Ballon d’Or that year and eventually signed for Real Madrid.

But the injuries he sustained as a youngster were nothing compared to the ACL injury he suffered at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. From that point on, he was a shadow of the player we saw at Liverpool.

“Once I did it once I was gone really,” Owen told TNT Sport.

“I was quick, running in channels, beating people. That’s who I was – compared to the last six or so years when I turned into the only thing I could.

“I was petrified of running into a channel. I just knew I was going to tear a muscle. The worst thing about it is your instinct is to do what you have done all your life but you start thinking: ‘Oh no, don’t.'”

Radamel Falcao

El Tigre’s two years in the Premier League – totally forgettable loans at Manchester United and Chelsea – were a sad watch for anyone familiar with one of Europe’s most fearsome goalscorers in his prime.

Like Ronaldo, Falcao silenced doubters when it looked like he’d never return to the top level. He enjoyed a renaissance back at his parent club Monaco in 2016-17, notching 21 Ligue 1 goals as they won an unlikely title at PSG’s expense.

But as good as he was that year, and as respectably decent the second half of his career has been, Falcao never quite reached the peak of his younger Porto and Atletico Madrid days.

We could’ve been looking at one of the 21st century’s all-time greats – think Luis Suarez or Robert Lewandowski – had he not been derailed by injury.

Alessandro Del Piero

The legendary Italian enjoyed more longevity and time at the top than any other name on this list.

His career peaked with the 2006 World Cup, while he won a second Serie A Italian Footballer of the Year award – 10 years after his first – in 2008.

So, in one sense, he recovered sensationally from the ACL injury he suffered at his absolute pomp in 1998.

But our criteria for this list is “was never the same” and that certainly applies here. The most impressive thing about Del Piero’s recovery was his reinvention as a footballer after a couple of years of struggle.

You can divide his career into before and after the ACL injury. While he never quite recovered his explosive pace or physicality, he transitioned into a more intelligent player whose strength was all about reading the game and exploiting spaces.

Abou Diaby

Such was the extent of the injury hell that Diaby suffered in his career, it’s difficult to pinpoint any one in particular.

A broken ankle suffered as a teenager set the tone for the many lay-offs the French midfielder would suffer at Arsenal, never allowing him to fulfil his immense potential.

But the 2013 ACL injury was one blow too many. It was effectively a career-ender, despite his perseverance to make it back for a painful six years.

He was only 26 at the time, but it left him sidelined for over a year. Diaby only made a further two appearances for the Gunners after returning, and managed just six outings for Marseille.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

A changing of the guard moment, Jurgen Klopp’s nascent Liverpool pipped Arsene Wenger’s ailing Arsenal to Champions League qualification in 2016-17.

They rubbed salt into their wounds by nabbing Oxlade-Chamberlain, back then a regular England international.

After a promising debut season on Merseyside, in which he threatened to go stratospheric by scoring in multiple wins over Pep Guardiola’s 100-point Manchester City juggernaut, he suffered a nightmare tear in the Champions League semi-final against Roma.

The recovery saw him out for almost the entirety of the following season, but he did return to make 30 appearances (17 starts) in the Reds’ emphatic Premier League title triumph in 2019-20.

Even then, while useful, he wasn’t quite the indispensable first-team regular he once appeared destined to become.

Now he’s 32 and a free agent after two non-descript years with Besiktas. Not what we’d have predicted a few years back.

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