The immensely talented winger spent just a season at Everton after a disastrous spell with Real Madrid.
When you retire at the age of 29 to devote yourself to an already ill-fated career in rap, you are probably safe to assume that your footballing journey didn’t quite pan out as expected, the Daily Mirror reports.
Yet, Royston Drenthe was no normal footballer. How many players share Sheffield Wednesday, Alania Vladikavkaz, Reading and Real Madrid on the same CV? However, like most of his other brief sojourns in a tumultuous and short-lived career, his season long loan at Everton in 2011/12 failed to live up to such lofty expectations.
Despite netting three times in the Premier League, the notoriously difficult Dutchman’s career in English football reached its premature conclusion after Everton boss David Moyes omitted him from the club’s FA Cup semi-final squad ahead of a defeat to Liverpool for repeatedly flouncing disciplinary rules, The Guardian reported.
Ironically, Drenthe’s raw pace could have been put to good use as Moyes suffered yet more cup heartbreak but, according to the retired winger, he and the Scot never saw eye to eye.
“I had a lot of arguments with Moyes at Everton,” he said in quotes reported by the Daily Mirror.
“I was branded as a ‘bad boy’, but there were also a lot of coaches who asked me how that was possible, because they didn’t have problems with me. But you never see these kind of stories in the media.”
Nonetheless, it’s difficult to dispel the feeling that Drenthe has no one to blame but himself for failing to fulfil his vast potential.
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