How Sterling, Osimhen misplaced their shirt quantity and Ronaldo took again No. 7 at Man Utd

Apart from being subbed off after having already entered the fray in its place, there are few indignities felt extra keenly in soccer than seeing your designated shirt quantity given away to a brand new signing.

Raheem Sterling was on the receiving finish of that very snub final week after Chelsea eliminated the England winger’s No. 7 shirt and exiled him from the first-team group and gave it to Pedro Neto, who was signed from Wolves.

Sterling is not the primary participant to face such humiliation and sure will not be the final, although given the perceived severity and potential ego-wounding ramifications of a senior participant being subjected to such knowledgeable slight, it is not a phenomenon that tends to crop up significantly often on the prime finish of the sport.

Listed below are just a few extra outstanding examples which have taken place in recent times, together with a barely extra thorough examination of Sterling’s rocky departure from Stamford Bridge final month.

Raheem Sterling

Having beforehand worn No. 7 at Manchester City for seven seasons, Sterling was initially unable to take his variety of alternative at Chelsea with N’Golo Kanté already incumbent. Nonetheless, after Kante left for Saudi Arabia in the summertime of 2023, the Blues’ No. 7 shirt was handed to Sterling, who proceeded to put on it for one season on the Bridge.

Sadly, a lack of kind resulted in Sterling shedding his grip on the shirt on the tail finish of August after it was revealed that the 29-year-old England worldwide had been not noted of latest supervisor Enzo Maresca’s plans for the 2024-25 marketing campaign.

With the switch deadline looming and a season within the doldrums on the playing cards, Sterling was finally in a position to salvage the state of affairs by securing a late mortgage swap to London rivals Arsenal on deadline day — although understandably the Gunners weren’t prepared to let Sterling take over their No. 7 shirt from Bukayo Saka, so No. 10 should do in the intervening time.

Edinson Cavani

Cavani suffered the misfortune of getting to relinquish his No. 7 jersey at Manchester United when a sure Cristiano Ronaldo returned to his former stomping floor in August 2021, and thus reclaimed the quantity he had beforehand worn for the membership over a decade earlier.

Together with his CR7 model to keep up, Ronaldo assumed his acquainted United No. 7 shirt after Cavani agreed to step apart and as a substitute take the vacant No. 21 (beforehand worn by Daniel James). This was all regardless of Cavani having already worn the No. 7 on the pitch initially of the season, simply previous to Ronaldo’s prodigal return.

Trevoh Chalobah

Sterling wasn’t the one Chelsea participant to have his first-team credentials revoked by the membership in August with Chalobah seeing his No. 14 eliminated in an effort to hand over to new João Félix, who returned to the membership completely after a six-month mortgage in 2023.

Chalobah represented the Blues since boyhood and has been a daily presence within the senior squad for a lot of years. Nonetheless, a comparatively bold switch valuation noticed the centre-back unable to draw potential suitors over the summer season and as a substitute he was demoted and consigned to life within the improvement squad.

Very similar to Sterling, nonetheless, Chalobah was lucky sufficient to wrangle an escape — if solely quickly — simply earlier than the deadline handed, becoming a member of Crystal Palace on a season-long mortgage.

Victor Osimhen

After main the road for Napoli of their historic Scudetto profitable season and continuing to ascertain himself as certainly one of European soccer’s most prolific and in-demand strikers, it was naturally assumed {that a} slew of massive names can be lining as much as signal the Nigeria worldwide this summer season.

Fairly the other transpired, with a proposed huge cash transfers to Al Ahli and Chelsea falling via — a flip of occasions that led Napoli to take the powerful choice to freeze Osimhen out of their Serie A squad, with the connection between the 2 events described as “broken.”

Simply to rub it in, the Partenopei then went and gave their title-winning hero’s No. 9 shirt to new signing Romelu Lukaku, who will put on it for the rest of the 2024-25 season.

With the switch window shut throughout Europe’s main leagues, Osimhen is about to affix Turkish membership Galatasaray on mortgage.

play

Why Victor Osimhen to Chelsea by no means got here to go

Mark Ogden explains why Victor Osimhen appears to be like set to remain at Napoli regardless of a summer season of hypothesis over his exit.

Anthony Martial

Issues not often ran easy for Martial at Manchester United, with the ahead struggling to keep up kind and/or health for any actually convincing size of time.

His brittle confidence will need to have absolutely taken a big knock in the summertime of 2016 when, after mustering simply 11 league targets for the Premier League facet, the 20-year-old Martial was pressured to step apart to make room for a veteran of the European footballing panorama.

Certain sufficient, United had simply managed to snare the signature of Zlatan Ibrahimovic on a free switch from Paris Saint-Germain with the swaggering Swede asserting his personal arrival by posting a big picture of his model new No. 9 shirt on social media.

Zlatan went onto play a pivotal position in United’s run to the Europa League last and completed because the membership’s prime scorer within the Premier League with 17 targets, and amassed 28 targets in all competitions. By the use of comparability, Martial pitched in with a paltry 4 league targets whereas discovering himself being often shuttled out and in of Jose Mourinho’s beginning line-up over the course of the marketing campaign.

Memphis Depay

Having failed to totally persuade the sceptics throughout his transient and vague run as Barcelona‘s central striker, Memphis was nudged apart when Polish goal-scoring veteran and two-time European Golden Shoe winner Robert Lewandowski arrived from Bayern Munich forward of the 2022-23 season.

Depay had been carrying the No. 9 shirt for Barca but it surely was determined that Lewandowski ought to be mechanically handed the mantle after being put in because the Catalan’s new attacking talisman, whereas his new Dutch colleague was bumped all the way down to No. 14 earlier than being moved to Atlético Madrid simply six months later.

Gareth Bale

After nicely and actually falling out of favour at Real Madrid, Bale was allowed to complete up his involvement with Wales at Euro 2020 earlier than rejoining former membership Tottenham Hotspur on mortgage for the 2020-21 season.

In his absence, Los Blancos wasted no time in stripping Bale of his No. 11 shirt on the Bernabeu and handing it to rising expertise Marco Asensio and latterly to Brazilian winger Rodrygo, as of the 2023-24 season following Asensio’s switch to Paris Saint-Germain.

Bale was duly assigned the No. 18 shirt at Actual Madrid in absentia, although he was by no means in a position to correctly anoint it after making a meagre variety of transient appearances for the Spanish giants upon his return for the 2021-22 marketing campaign. He then lastly referred to as it quits and headed off to MLS with LAFC for one final swan track previous to his retirement.