It’s been more than two years since Giovanni van Bronckhorst played Alfredo Morelos knowing that his only fit striker was struggling with a thigh injury and the former Rangers striker has never fully recovered.
The Colombian missed the rest of the season and returned to the first-team squad out of shape and out of form, but for injury, Antonio Colak would have kept him out of the team for the whole season.
A disastrous last season at Rangers saw Alfredo Morelos leave on a free transfer, however, his reputation for having a poor attitude to conditioning appears to still be a problem.
Alfredo Morelos continues post-Rangers decline
Now at Santos and in the second tier of Brazilian football, it was thought (hoped) that the sale of Marcos Leonardo to Benfica would see Morelos get his head down and focus on what he does best – scoring goals.
Unfortunately, according to Brazilian radio station Estadio 97, the decline of Alfredo Morelos after leaving Rangers seems to have taken another turn for the worst:
“During the Paulistão dispute, Colombian striker Alfredo Morelos did not live up to the expectations of the Santos board, which resulted in his exclusion from the Brasileirão Series B plans.
“With performance below expectations and physical difficulties evident in training, Morelos now faces the prospect of contract termination, while the club seeks alternatives for his departure.”
The pre-season tournament that Santos have just completed saw Morelos get plenty of game time, however, he has managed just two goals and one assist in 11 appearances, one of those being from the spot.
El Bufalo will be 28 in the summer and should be approaching his peak.
After discipline problems at Rangers on and off the pitch and his attitude at Santos not improving, what clubs are going to take a gamble on a player who just doesn’t seem to have the application needed to be a professional athlete?
Morelos fitness issues are nothing new
Anecdotally, he was always bimbling about in training videos and both Andy Halliday and Greg Stewart have said that he is the worst trainer they have ever seen.
How can a player go from dominating players like Porto legend Pepe to, seemingly, not being able to apply himself during training.
The issue Alfredo Morelos has now is that age is no longer on his side and he isn’t going to get any fitter unless he has a serious rethink about what he wants to do for the rest of his career.
He’s gone from being linked with top five league clubs in Europe to now, potentially, having his contract ripped up by a second-tier side in Brazil.
Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard.
