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This lad needs to be studied.

Remember Alex Telles? He’s developed an addiction to scoring worldies

Mitchell Wilks •

In an era of Turkish Super Lig stars and true forgotten Barclays fodder, Alex Telles ticks quite possibly every box you could imagine on the football round of your pub quiz sheet.

If you take his current club Al Nassr out of the equation and turn his football CV upside down, Telles boasts a rather perfect football career arc, from humble beginnings in Seville to the dream move to Manchester United, before tailing off into Turkey and back to his native Brazil.

Strangely, though, he’s done it the other way around. Leaving Brazil for Europe in 2014, the left-back made Galatasaray his first stop and managed to escape Super Lig purgatory by securing a move to Porto two years later, via a loan spell with Inter.

Most football fans’ lasting memory of the Brazilian, despite his success across several countries, will be his ill-fated three-year spell with United.

Arriving in 2020, Telles was signed to finally knock Luke Shaw off his perch and make the left-back position his own, but very swiftly assumed the role of understudy as his mere presence was enough to kick the Englishman back into gear and subsequently the form of his life.

There’s that, and there’s the fact that when he did play, Telles wasn’t really up to the task. At all. But are you bothered by that? Because we’re not. He turned up, tried to start a top-knot revival in the Premier League and left the club with one ridiculous goal to his name. A solid innings.

If you’re going to score one goal for arguably the biggest club in the world, though, you may as well make it an absolute golazo.

Telles did just that and is now on a mission in Saudi Arabia to prove that he is the most ordinary footballer in the world with the most extraordinary shooting ability.

As Al Nassr punched in a 3-1 victory over Steven Gerrard’s Al-Ettifaq in the ever wonderful and not insufferable Saudi Pro League, Telles stole the show – likely to the delight of colleague Cristiano Ronaldo – with a strike so venomous it must’ve come from the depths of hell.

Sh*t! Did you see that? As the great Alan Partridge once said, he must have a foot like a traction engine.

Spotting a loose ball dropping out of the air, the 31-year-old locks onto it with RADAR and sends it fizzing into the back of the net with enough whip and velocity to put life on Mars – and eyes on the Saudi Pro League.

He’s an enigma, is Telles. We’ve never witnessed a footballer so undeniably average who has managed to turn out for United and some of the biggest clubs in Europe, while also possessing perhaps one of the most vicious strikes in the game right now.

Seriously, what an anomaly. It’s a complete party trick of a left foot.

He’d fit right in at Sunday League level with a shot like that. Turns up caked up to the heavens in ankle tape and aftershave just to get beaten by his winger all morning, before forcing his way onto free-kick duties and justifying his performance by rifling one top bins.

The only one he’ll score all season from another 100 missed attempts. But we don’t need to hear about those. That’s no fun.

Bask in the greatness that is Alex Telles and his extraordinarily average abilities, as he rides off into the footballing sunset, one sh*tpinger at a time.

By Mitch Wilks

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Manchester United Saudi Arabia