It’s a year on from Richarlison’s emotional goodbye to Everton but this controversial move continues to provide more questions than answers and nobody seems to have been left entirely satisfied by it.
This correspondent recently received a text message from an old friend who is a Liverpool fan, asking whether I still thought Tottenham Hotspur had Everton off with the Richarlison fee. My reply went something along the lines of £50million plus add ons being a relatively modest figure in today’s inflated transfer market for Brazil’s number nine, that the Blues could have potentially got more for him had the World Cup been held in the summer like it usually is (he netted three goals in the finals), and if Spurs didn’t know how to utilise him properly then it was their problem…
Reds have always struggled to appreciate him though and following a war of words with Jamie Carragher, the former Kop Idol declared: “He just winds people up that lad, Richarlison. He winds me up.” It’s only since the Brazilian offered an olive branch in the shape of inviting Carragher onto the pitch for a kick about at the Etihad that the Reds old boy started to see the ex-Blues ace in a new light.
Richarlison has always worn his heart on his sleeve, though, and along with his silky skills – something that you’d expect from a forward player from his country – a willingness to graft endeared him so much to Evertonians. From the moment of his two-goal debut at a rainy Molineux on the opening day of the 2018/19 season, it was love at first sight.
Here was a player that rose to become an Olympic gold medal winner while at Everton – he was also top scorer in the tournament at the Tokyo Games – but although he arrived at the club when they were splashing out on players from Barcelona and then played at Goodison Park under the great Carlo Ancelotti (incredibly it’s understood that the generation gap between the two ensured he initially didn’t realise the Italian had been a world-class player in his own right before going into coaching), his final days with the Blues were spent fighting against relegation.
In that respect, Everton failed him in being unable to build a competitive team around a talent who gets to line-up alongside Neymar and company when he goes away on international duty. However, he at least left them with some parting gifts in the shape of six goals in his last nine games, including that crucial winner at home to Chelsea at the start of the final month of the 2021/22 season.
As stated earlier, there haven’t really been any winners in Richarlison’s switch to Tottenham, other than Everton’s bean counters, given the deal was pushed through before the end of June to ensure the Blues’ annual accounts were given a rosier tint. A deal for the boy who had risen from poverty on the streets of Nova Venecia in Espirito Santo to become the darling of the Gwladys Street was thrashed out between Everton chairman Bill Kenwright and his Spurs counterpart Daniel Levy across the table at Scott’s, the Mayfair seafood restaurant that sells caviar and boasts an elegant oyster and champagne bar.
For his part, the player, now 26, has so far failed to convince in north London and has netted just once in 27 Premier League matches for his new club to date. The Blues are also worse off without him and have failed to sufficiently reinvest the funds recouped for Richarlison back into their team.
