When he’s good he’s close to priceless. But when he’s bad he’s more trouble than he’s worth.
That’s the conundrum of Alfredo Morelos and the dilemma which, much to his credit, Giovanni van Bronckhorst has chosen to confront head on. By taking the buffalo by the horns last week, van Bronckhorst sent out a very clear message that the manchild tendencies will no longer be tolerated, far less excused. Over the course of the next three days it will become obvious how the Dutchman has decided to deal with this notoriously combustible Colombian. Morelos will either be sold before the transfer window shuts on Thursday night and become some other manager’s problem to solve.
Or he will knuckle down under van Bronckhorst and finally achieve his long, burning ambition by showcasing his undoubted talents on the greatest stage of them all in the Champions League? That Rangers got there by dismantling PSV Eindhoven without him should serve as a wake-up call for the 26-year-old.
Either way, will the real Alfredo Morelos please grow up? The penny must surely have dropped over these last few days along with a realisation that Rangers are no longer entirely dependent upon his prolific instinct for scoring goals.
With Antonio Colak getting off to a blistering start in the No9 shirt, for the first time in his five years in Glasgow, Morelos is no longer the be-all-and-end-all solution to leading the Rangers attack. So now that this unhealthy over-reliance has come to an end, so too must all the over-indulgence which went with it.
Right from the start, following his £1m move from HJK Helsinki, Morelos developed a habit for infuriating his teammates, with a selfish indiscipline. And yet, the more he bailed them out by hitting the back of the net, the more enabled this behaviour seemed to become.
Routinely turning up late for training sessions and team meetings tested the patience of teammates and a succession of managers alike. But none of them seemed able or willing to do anything meaningful about it, at the risk of ending up with a talisman with a seriously petted lip.
Pedro Caixinha couldn’t cope with it. It tipped Graeme Murty into some sort of meltdown. And even the unflappable Steven Gerrard began to fray around the edges.
In many ways, this continual pandering was understandable as a happy, content Morelos operating at the top of his game can be quite a force of nature.
At his best Morelos can get close to being unplayable. There was a trail of devastation in his wake across Europe last season as defenders from all over the continent took it in turns to be rag-dolled by this pocket powerhouse.
But at his worst – when devoid of focus and lacking in fitness – he gets even closer to becoming intolerable. Only those inside the Rangers dressing room at Easter Road the other week will know what really went down after Morelos had left his mates in the lurch with a needless sending off.
Suffice to say, whatever was said or done, it was enough for Van Bronckhorst to make one of the most ballsy decisions of his managerial career. By axing Morelos from the travelling party to Eindhoven, Van Bronckhorst took a monumental risk. Had it backfired he would have stood accused of taking a wrecking ball to a £40m prize pot.
In fact, initial news of the omission induced a state of panic in some quarters with Rangers fans bombarding phone-ins to question the manager’s sense of mental wellbeing. One supporter took to the airwaves to demand that Morelos be treated more respectfully and suggested too that the late Walter Smith would have love-bombed the striker back into top form.
That will have raised a chuckle with anyone lucky enough to see Smith going about his work at close quarters. The great man would have pinned Morelos up against a dressing room wall rather than offer him a cup of tea and a cuddle He did it to bigger and better mavericks than Morelos after all.
In his autobiography, Lorenzo Amoruso recounts the day Smith let rip at Paul Gascoigne with such ferocity that the Geordie made a mess of his Y-fronts. Amoruso wrote: “Walter had really lost it now. I was certain he was about to punch Gazza in the face. It was an incredibly scary sight – in fact, it was too scary for Gazza.
“As he sat there I noticed that his trousers were turning a darker colour around his groin. Less than a month later Gazza had gone to Middlesbrough.”
Times and methods may have changed over the years but van Bronckhorst took a leaf straight out of Smith’s managerial playbook when he singled Morelos out for punitive action. And now we are about to discover if the South American will also be considered as surplus to requirements just as Gazza was midway through Smith’s ill-fated quest for a tenth successive title in 1998.
Or if van Bronckhorst’s short, sharp shock treatment has shaken him back to his senses ahead of the first Old Firm showdown of the season. With rampant Celtic coming off the back of yesterday’s 9-0 thrashing of Dundee United, Van Bronckhorst might need all the firepower he can get his hands on for that trip across the Clyde.
The question is, has Morelos already thrown one tantrum too many to be trusted in that powderkeg environment? Or will he have been moved on before any more damage is done?
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