5 goals from Jeremy Menez to convince an Italian team to sign him

When I heard that Menez was left without a team, I was rather surprised. There are many free players at the moment, it's true, and the names are also important (to make some examples, Hatem Ben Arfa and Willy Bony, and some other with a beautiful Instagram account). But not Menez: he is not really one of those to stay at home, with slippers instead of shoes and the remote control in hand. I don't see him on talk shows talking about football, saying that everyone is still less good than he is, that if he really wanted to play soccer it would be the biggest, and so on.

Menez is not a stage animal, Menez is a field animal. Like all predators, the French need open spaces to run. And where you can do it in freedom, above all. Accustomed to the great migrations, he could not stay in one place for too long: at most he resisted three years in a team, during his career, always playing between highs and lows, like any self-respecting anarchist footballer.

In Italy we saw him last with the Milan shirt, and in the disastrous year 2014/2015, with Pippo Inzaghi on the bench and a 10th place at the end of the season, he has been one of the few positive note (16 goals and 4 assists in Serie A) of a quite improvised team, from the bench to the men in the field (it was the last Galliani period, that of loans, released and swapping with Genoa).

Before that, Menez made his first Serie A appearance with the AS Roma shirt, enchanting in flashes and proving his extraordinary qualities. Menez looked like one of those tightrope walkers seen at traffic lights: he started fiddling and was spotted by the biggest and richest circus in the world, which at the time was called PSG. There, in Paris, among other jugglers, he again showed the secret blows of his unruly talent.

To convince a Serie A team to join Jeremy Menez, however, it is better to leave the historiography of his career alone and focus on what he did on the pitch. I invite all managers to take a ride on YouTube and watch old and grainy videos of Menez's plays, because in addition to the goals in his repertoire there is really everything, on a technical level. But we rely on networks, because Menez is still a striker, in his own way, and then at the end of the year that budget weighs all the same. In the hope that a Gervinho 2.0 will take place, here are five of the most beautiful goals in Menez, arrived with five different jerseys, in increasing order of age:

#1 AS Monaco

Here we see him very young, already arrogant, already contemptuous of danger: Menez dives among the defenders as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sinks into their jerseys and then emerges victorious from that tangle, all in a fraction of a second. Finally it beats the goalkeeper with coldness and lucidity.

#2 AS Roma 

Menez has never scored so much in his career, and more than a finisher he is a assist man, a healthy bearer of chaos that disrupts opposing defenses and leaves others with the task of concluding the action. This, however, does not mean that he is not able to hit even on his own: here we see him recovering a loose ball in midfield and aiming straight for the goal, skipping the Udinese defenders with swerving and deadly pitch changes.

#3 PSG

Menez knows how to aim straight at the door and skip the rivals like ninepins with swerving and deadly step changes not only in Italy, but also in France: here we see him in action with the PSG, where proverbially he has been more difficult to show off for some years. He was one of the "jewels of the first hour" of Al-Khelaïfi, who not by chance chose Menez as one of the first players to bring to court. This is because the French was able to stage similar things:

#4 AC Milan

Goal that perhaps best describes the phenomenal recklessness of Menez, who is one of the few players who manages to cross the baseline without being ridiculous or crashing into billboards. The Frenchman has a crazy control of his running speed, he knows exactly how far his body can go and that's why he takes it to the extreme limit. If you add a heel goal to all of this, you will have one of the best goals in Serie A in the last 10 years.

#5 Club America

Ok, but what happened to Menez? Untied, yes, but from where? The Frenchman has just finished his experience in Mexico, at Club America, and at the age of 32 he is ready to take on a new challenge. Overseas has shown that it still has a few tricks up its sleeve, like this shot as a counterbalance: easy only in appearance, the goal in question tells another quality of Menez, which is to make things look really easy in reality very difficult.

Which Serie A team could sign him?

Someone called on Cagliari, and surely Menez would be able to lend a hand to the Sardinians, even if perhaps his anarchic spirit could not be reconciled with the dogmatic pragmatism of Maran: in such a form, with a salvation to be conquered in a concrete way lucid, there is room for only one Joao Pedro in the team. It would be nice to see Menez wearing a newly promoted jersey, for example that of Lecce, to bring some of his light of hope to a team that seems to be one of the biggest candidates for relegation.

Other possible nice teams to see Menez:

- Atalanta, to see him duet on the trocar with Iličič, Muriel, the Papu Gomez and Zapata all at once;

- AS Roma, for a romantic return that would warm the hearts of many;

- Brescia, to see it in action together with Mario Balotelli, in a tandem of renegades who could freely decide to leave the team in 9 from one moment to the next, or to make it win with three goal difference.

- Sassuolo, as the Kevin Prince Boateng replacement: De Zerbi could exalt him, and consequently Menez could move to Barcelona in January.

PS: it is also a great rigorist. Come on, isn't there really any Italian who would like a Menez on the team?