Jose Izquierdo and a Brighton career of what ifs?

It was not a surprise but it was still sad news. Jose Izquierdo will leave Brighton this summer with the Albion deciding not to renew the contract of a player who has managed just eight minutes of first team football since April 2019.

Unless you have a heart made of stone, it is difficult not to feel for Izquierdo. He is a lovely bloke with an infectious personality. How can you not like a man who has an Instagram account for his pet pig with more followers than most of the Albion’s first team squad?

In football terms, Izquierdo has worked hard to get back on the pitch following a succession of knee problems caused largely through mismanagement rather than him being injury prone. Oh, and before he went to the 2018 World Cup in Russia he was some player.

Izquierdo was one of those individuals who would get fans on their feet through sheer unpredictability. Opponents could never work out what he would do next, partly because he never seemed to know himself.

At its most productive, this unpredictability would lead to the spectacular. West Ham United were the victims of it twice, Izquierdo scoring two stunners against the Irons at the London Stadium in October 2017 and then at the Amex in February 2018.

When Izquierdo picked the ball up after West Ham failed to convincingly clear a corner in the second of those games, who expected him to go for the top corner from a position 30 yards away from goal and way out on the right?

What followed was one of the best strikes that the Amex has ever seen. Adrian in the West Ham goal was a pretty good goalkeeper and even he was left flabbergasted as the ball bent, sailed and then dipped over the top of him to put the Albion 2-1 ahead and on their way to a first Premier League win in seven.

Fast forward a week and Izquierdo showed another side to his game. A grim day in Stoke-on-Trent was lit up when the Colombian was involved in and rounded off a fantastic team goal at the Bet365 Stadium.

“Am I watching Brighton or Barcelona?” went the commentary as the Albion sliced through the Stoke defence with one-touch pass followed by one-touch pass. Izquierdo finished the move off with a clinical shot past Jack Butland to put Brighton 1-0 ahead.

It says much about the quality of that goal that when people talk about that day in the Potteries, it overshadows all the drama which took place in the final minute.

(Either that or nobody wants to talk about Maty Ryan’s last minute penalty save, because it would mean acknowledging that Ryan was not the useless hobbit that some Brighton fans want to rewrite history and make him out to be.)

Those two goals were part of a five-goal haul registered by Izquierdo in the 2017-18 season. Only Glenn Murray and Pascal Gross managed more and whilst the contributions of those two to keeping the Albion in the Premier League were well noted, looking back it feels like the role Izquierdo played went under the radar.

Which leads us nicely to the point of this piece – what if Jose Izquierdo had never been injured? What if the knee problem he suffered at the World Cup had been properly treated in the first place? What if the Albion had not rushed him back when even Stevie Wonder could see he was effectively playing on one leg?

Before Jose Izquierdo went to Russia, he was never injury prone. He managed 36 appearances in his first season with Brighton. Before that, he played 99 times in three years for Club Brugge, scoring 40 goals. The reason his Albion career is now over is because of what happened that summer and in the nine months that followed.

Izquierdo suffered from a cartilage injury in his left knee in Colombia’s opening game of the World Cup against Japan. He completed 70 minutes of the fixture and continued to train and play despite the pain he was in, putting it down to a minor knock after being kicked by an opponent. Understandably, Izquierdo did not want to give up the opportunity of representing his country at the pinnacle of the sport.

Even so, there was clearly an issue and Izquierdo did not feature again as Colombia defeated Poland and Senegal before crashing out in the last 16 to England.

A scan after the tournament showed a small tear and so Izquierdo rested the knee. When the rest of the Albion squad returned for pre-season ahead of the 2018-19 campaign, Izquierdo was receiving extra time off with the club hoping that the problem would repair itself.

It didn’t. After just two training sessions on his return to the American Express Elite Football Performance Centre, the issue reared up again and another scan revealed that Izquierdo had actually injured his meniscus.

The meniscus is a particularly sensitive area of the body. When something in it goes wrong, it can play havoc on the lower leg, the upper leg and the back because of the way the knee is connected to the rest of the body. It was a meniscus injury which caused Micah Richards to retire from football at the age of 31.

Izquierdo now needed surgery, ruling him out for the first six games of the 2018-19 Premier League campaign. He returned for the 2-0 defeat away at Manchester City in late September and worked his way back towards full fitness before suffering a different tear to the meniscus in the 3-1 win over Crystal Palace in December, this time at the back of the knee.

According to The Argus, a second operation was ruled out on medical advice. Instead, Izquierdo is said to have sat out the next two months and 11 matches before being pressed back into action in February as the Albion were sliding dangerously down the Premier League table.

From his subsequent eight appearances, it was pretty obvious that he was not fit. His final Premier League start for Brighton came in April 2019’s 1-1 draw at home to Newcastle United, when he was a shadow of the Jose Izquierdo we had seen the previous season.

It was actually quite sad to see such an exciting talent clearly struggling. Not even Harold Shipman would have left him out there to toil for 66 minutes as Chris Hughton did. Izquierdo should not have been playing, no matter how desperate the Albion were to try and stop an alarming slide towards the relegation zone.

Izquierdo looked so crocked that rumours began circulating that he had in fact had a secret second knee operation in that spell out of the side between December 2018 and February 2019.

Whatever the treatment prescribed during that period was, it did not work. It was no surprise when the club revealed immediately after the Newcastle game that Izquierdo would require another operation in the summer of 2019.

Why did the Albion play him through injury? They could have operated as soon as the problem flared up again in February or March instead of putting him through the ringer of Premier League football for another two months, potentially doing irrevocable damage.

Talking about his meniscus injury, Richards said that he could still play with careful management. Under Tim Sherwood at Aston Villa, he was given a personalised training schedule geared towards getting him on the pitch through a light work load.

Once Remi Garde arrived at Villa Park, Richards found himself being told to run for miles and miles in every training session if he wanted to be in contention to play. That wrecked the knee and forced his early retirement.

The lesson here is that managing a meniscus injury properly requires not flogging the player carrying the problem. In those final months of the 2018-19 season, you got the sense that Brighton were doing just that to Izquierdo.

When that summer 2019 operation was announced, The Argus reported that the procedure was “not expected to side line Izquierdo for a sustained period but he will be missing when the Seagulls’ third Premier League campaign commences in August.”

By the autumn of 2019, Graham Potter was answering questions about Izquierdo’s fitness by saying he expected the Colombian to play a part before the end of the 2019-20 campaign.

Izquierdo did eventually make it back onto the pitch in October 2020. He played 29 minutes of the Albion’s Premier League 2 clash with West Ham, continuing his love of scoring against the Hammers by hitting the winner in a 3-2 victory. The dream return.

Izquierdo started four more matches for the Under 23s up until the end of November 2020, playing one half of football every time and chipping in with an assist against Blackburn Rovers.

His last outing for the development squad came on November 30th – 45 minutes in a 1-0 win away at Southampton – after which, he was an unused first team substitute on six occasions. He finally climbed off the bench for his first taste of Premier League football in 24 months in April’s 1-0 defeat against Sheffield United.

Although Izquierdo was only on the pitch for eight minutes at Bramall Lane, he did enough in that time to suggest he still possesses his old ability.

The highlight saw Izquierdo embark on one of his trademark surges from the left, finding space through the middle and then curling an effort from distance which Aaron Ramsdale had to turn around the post at full stretch.

Turns out that moment was to be the last contribution Jose Izquierdo would make in a Brighton shirt. He did not feature again despite being named amongst the substitutes against 1996 Coca Cola Cup runners up The Leeds United and Wolves.

Whether that was due to complications with the injury or because the Albion did not want him to pass 50 Premier League games for the club (Izquierdo departs with 48 league appearances under his belt) to trigger a bonus payment to Club Brugge, we will never know.

We will also never know how good Jose Izquierdo might have been as a component in a Brighton team playing in Potter’s attacking style. Instead, we can only imagine the devastation he might have caused with his pace and unpredictability cutting in from the left of a front three… unless of course Potter Roulette ended up with Izquierdo playing as a centre back.

And that is why Jose Izquierdo being released by Brighton is such sad news. He took to the Premier League like a duck to water and looked primed to do even better in his second season once he had a year of experience in England under his belt.

If Jose Izquierdo had lived up to that promise, he had the potential to go onto become a real star at Brighton as a player capable of blockbuster game changing moments. Now all we can do is hope he shines at another club willing to give him a chance. He deserves it.