I can’t pretend that Jlloyd Samuel was the best player I’ve ever seen, or even the best left-back, or even the best left-back for Aston Villa, a team perpetually bereft of good left-backs. And right-backs. You know, footballers in general.
He was a certified Premier League starter for three and a half seasons though, until Wilfred Bouma arrived from the Netherlands and gained full fitness. Still, there is no shame in losing your place to a Dutch international, and no shame at all in losing your place to Wilfred Bouma, a player who was not so much built like a refrigerator as built like the warehouse in which you store the refrigerators.
Wilfred Bouma was really good. He was the best number three I’ve seen at Villa Park. But then there was Jlloyd, who wasn’t quite as good, but who was also, maybe, my favourite.
For a while at least he was really fucking exciting. Reading that sentence now sounds beyond hyperbolic, but it’s true. During the 03-04 season he was one of the best LBs in the league, only 23 at the time, and was picked by Sven Goran-Eriksson for a game against Sweden.
For whatever reason Jamie Carragher played the full 90 minutes out of position and Samuel never did earn his England cap. A young Ajax striker – you might know him – scored the winner that game. Eight years later that same player would levitate, a Dragon Ball-Z cartoon, and somersault a volley over Joe Hart from an illogical and arrogant angle, let alone distance. By this time Samuel was playing in Iran for Esteghlal, a Premier League afterthought, divergent paths that were never to meet.
Jlloyd was an unpredictable player cemented in absolutes. He was forever quicker than opposing wingers and would always, at least once a match, throw himself into a tackle more out of fear than bravery. He needed us, it seemed, on our feet and alive in the moment. Otherwise he was lost, the sound of the tree in the forest with no-one around.
He was suddenly brilliant then, conducting the orchestra so that once the debris had settled he was ready to take the throw-in he had inevitably won with thousands now behind him. The previously dormant turned operatic, it was now heat and lava, liquid confidence running out of his every pore.
This was when he was at his best, when it glistened on him like sweat. It was then that Jlloyd played, sauntering up and down the left flank, Villa Park a beach, firing homing missile crosses onto Juan Pablo Angel’s hairband like it had a computer chip, laying passes for the pneumatic Hitzlsperger, overlapping Gareth Barry like a thought bubble.
He was good, Jlloyd. He wasn’t the best, or one of the best, but he was good. Not always though, and that’s important. Your heroes aren’t always the best players, they’re the ones you get attached to – shit, they’re the ones that disappoint you too.
Samuel’s only two league goals for Villa came against the same team. Both of them involved him running and twisting through a series of training cones disguised in Charlton kit. Both of them ended in him cutting inside on his right foot against the advice of the Doctors and fans unaware he even had one. Both games ended 2-1, both of his goals winners, both of them finishes and composure beyond a normal left-back, beyond himself.
Your heroes are the ones that can surprise you, too.
And those players above, battling him for the frame of my attention?
They’ve never meant as much to anyone, they’ve never played left-back for Villa.
