“We went all the way Gary. Thanks for your support.” So read Marc Cucurella’s Instagram story after winning Euro 2024 with Spain, referencing comments Gary Neville had made pre-tournament on ITV.
Neville called Chelsea’s hirsute left-back a “good example” of why he thought Spain wouldn’t “go all the way”. Before the Euros, this wasn’t so much a hot take as the accepted discourse around a player who has struggled in his search for footballing meaning of late.
Yet he finished Euro 2024 as the standout left-back of the tournament, with his hands on the trophy and a promise he would die his hair red left to fulfil. Luis de la Fuente gave him a clearly defined role which suited his skillset, and which he executed to near perfection.
What does this mean for Cucurella’s future at Stamford Bridge? He remains a defensively excellent but offensively limited full-back, a relic of a different era whose greatest enemy is the overambitious assessment of his ability and skillset bestowed by his £60m price tag.
He was also blighted by an array of personal problems shortly after leaving Brighton. He initially had to move his partner and three kids into a hotel, before finding a house which was promptly robbed. A virus meant he lost significant weight which he struggled to recover and, all the while, everything was going wrong on the pitch.
“It’s been hard to turn the tables,” he told The Athletic last week. “I’ve worked very hard. I’ve suffered a lot for my family too. That’s been the worst thing. I was a bit scared, in the moments I was being criticised, that when going for a walk in the city with my family someone would insult us.”
But a lot of Cucurella’s problems have been caused by an inability to recognise his creative weaknesses, providing him too much attacking freedom and responsibility. If he’s allowed to maraud forward, it works best as a distraction rather than a legitimate outlet, pulling defenders out of position as he has for Nico Williams.
Of the 163 players to complete a cross at Euro 2024, Cucurella was the joint-seventh least accurate, with only one of his nine attempts finding a man.
Last season, he made 0.15 goal-creating actions per 90 minutes, the same as defensive midfielders Jefferson Lerma and Mario Lemina, and significantly lower than centre-backs Sven Botman (0.2) and Harry Maguire (0.22). He may be the man who just set up the winning goal at Euro 2024, but he also hasn’t managed more than two assists in any of the past four club seasons.
As a rule, the lower he keeps his final ball, the better the results. When aiming high crosses into the box, he has a tendency to get overzealous and hit the ball too hard, meaning he either overshoots his mark or the forward can’t do anything with it. His two assists last season both came from low balls into Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson who did most of the work.
But defensively, he remains impressive; diligent and aggressive without being reckless. He did a similar job shutting down Bukayo Saka on Sunday as he had at Stamford Bridge last October in a 2-2 draw. At Euro 2024, he recovered the ball 34 times, ninth among all players, and was fouled 12 times – a real asset for a team strong from set-pieces.
By no means does one summer justify Cucurella’s price tag, still an outrageous feat of financial frivolity which you hope would not be repeated now Todd Boehly is no longer self-appointed sporting director. Even lifting the Henri Delaunay trophy does little-to-nothing to bridge the £30m valuation gap between Cucurella’s limited talents and Chelsea’s assessment of them.
It was also a failure of squad-building that Ben Chilwell and Cucurella were Chelsea’s two best left-back options last season, footballers with diametrically opposed strengths and weaknesses who require entirely different tactical structures to flourish. Cucurella was bought to fit Thomas Tuchel’s system a month before he was sacked, now neither can live while the other survives.
And while Chilwell is the better player, Cucurella better fits the structure we assume Enzo Maresca will aim to implement. At Leicester, Maresca utilised his left-backs in three different ways – as a defensive-minded traditional full-back, inverting higher up the pitch or as the left-sided defender in a three.
These are all roles which would suit Cucurella, particularly inverting into midfield as he did in the final few games of last season. At 5ft 8in, he’s on the short side to play in a back three, but has the aerial ability and tenacity to compensate, a la Manchester United’s Lisandro Martinez.
He will be competing against Levi Colwill and new signing Renato Veiga for that spot, but with Europa Conference League qualification and potential cup runs to come, there will still be opportunities if that is the option Maresca chooses to pursue.
Cucurella’s form has consistently improved since March, from Chelsea and Spain’s third choice left-back to European champion. His new task is to continue this develop under a manager who should appreciate and embellish his strengths. One critic down, only a few million left to go.