With the transfer window now closed, long gone are the stories of players missing training to try and force a move elsewhere, or managerial worries that their players might not perform the same if their head is filled with promises from other clubs.
A lot of it is often embellished by the media, who, more often than not, like to make things more dramatic than they are, but in the case of Luka Modric and his move to Real Madrid, everyone around him felt he was different.
This is what former Spurs defender William Gallas discussed on Le Vestiaire on Wednesday night on RMC Sport, asked if he’d ever been around a player who was sad to have stayed at a club.
After some thinking, he came up with the Modric example.
“During the camp, you could see he wasn’t right. You felt he was a little bit depressed because he wanted to leave, and when he kept seeing the days go by, he was asking us if he would be allowed to leave and what he could do to get his move. Even during training, you don’t train like you should, and that can be a problem”.
Similar examples of this during the last window were Moussa Dembélé and his move from Celtic to Lyon, who even went as far as facing the club’s board to ask why he wasn’t allowed to leave despite being promised he could by Brendan Rodgers.
Modric eventually got his move to Spain, and the rest is history, most recently reaching the World Cup final with Croatia and winning UEFA Men’s Player of the Year Award ahead of ex-teammate Cristiano Ronaldo.
