The Waitrose Richie De Laet
Every title winning team has its fringe players who don’t contribute much but need to be there. That is the nature of football, it’s a squad game and teams win trophies, not players.
That said, you’d do well to find a player with a better trophies to minutes ratio than Alvaro Odriozola, who won five trophies for two different clubs this season while only playing a total of 612 minutes. That is an average of one trophy every 122 minutes.
How he managed to do that is very simple: he spent the first half of the season at Real Madrid and then went on loan to Bayern Munich.
With four LaLiga appearances under his belt this season, he played a small role in Madrid’s LaLiga title win and earned himself a medal, even if he wasn’t there to lift the trophy with them.
But Madrid’s first title of the season came in January, when they won the Supercopa de España in Saudi Arabia. Odriozola played no part in either match Madrid played in this mini tournament but was still technically part of the team who won it.
Then after he moved on loan to Bayern Munich, he struggled for game time, with Joshua Kimmich and Benjamin Pavard to compete with at right-back. But, he won the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and the Champions League, while only playing five games in all competitions for the German giants. Not a bad return all things considered.
He will now head back to Real Madrid, where he will probably win another two trophies at least next term.
