A tribute to Arsenal's eternal cult hero Alex Hleb, an ugly beauty lost in time

Given the specific style of affection we have for footballers of the 90s, I have always been curious how we will remember those whose heyday has come in the past 15 years or so.< /p>

The otherworldly numbers put together by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for the better part of a decade truly have no equal in terms of longevity, and there's a big question mark whether this context will make it harder for us to remember less prolific players without the ultra-competitive numbers game being thrown back at us.

We may not think less of Pele's contemporaries for their failure to match his goal tallies, but we haven't had the opportunity to watch the Brazilian in action every week. When Messi and Ronaldo leave, their careers will either be mythologized to death or completely devoid of nuance, depending on the achievements of those who follow them.

They won't be treated the same as the Football Italia generation, whose best times were enjoyed and weak points forgotten, but that doesn't mean there won't be no vacuum for the footballer-as-mythology.

In a world where two men have done it all, however, that role can be left to those who shone in front of a select few but never became the player they could have been.

Alex Hleb's trophy cabinet doesn't single him out as anything special - a Champions League final defeat here, an absence from a winning team there - and as a native of Belarus , he never even came close to participating in a major international tournament.

However, when it comes to talent and eye quality, the former Arsenal midfielder had few equals.

We can think of April 2005 as a break between old and new, that iconic shot of Rui Costa and Marco Materazzi in an explosive-strewn San Siro - you know, the one you recognize from the starter pack of the football Twitter – acting as a bridge between the last generation and the one we are witnessing today.

At the time, we were in the middle of a Champions League quarter-final without Barcelona, ​​Real Madrid or Manchester United - the last time such a thing happened.

It was also just two months before Hleb, after three successive finishes in the top six of the Bundesliga with VfB Stuttgart, completed his move to Arsenal.

This was before Twitter, and before we all knew everything about a player, but fans were able to piece together some things: specifically that he wasn't a prolific goalscorer, but he was good with the ball, even if its small size did not imply strength.

In short, a potentially perfect fit for Arsenal of this era but, at the same time, perhaps the kind of player who would do little to dispel complaints about the Gunners still trying to score the goal perfect.

Some of the world's greatest are often credited with making football really easy, but Hleb's beauty comes from how hard he made it all.

Almost every touch was deliberate in a way that was unique to him, as if his very possession of the ball posed a threat to his stability. While others made an individual run, he made a series of miniature runs each time he got the ball back.

Each contact was like the start of a micro-dribble, as if he felt he had to start over several times during each dribble. And while it may have hindered others, for him it was a chance to pinch the ball off the nearest man at the last possible moment.

While the approach can see you taken possession of the ball and, yes, accused of trying to do too much, when that happens it can make the other team feel very, very dumb. And really, isn't that the point of football.

He may not have scored as many goals for Arsenal - just 10 in three seasons there - but does it really matter when you can?



In theory, Hleb's move to Barcelona in 2008 should have been perfect.

He was exactly the kind of player Pep Guardiola would love in 2018, but things didn't quite work out with the Catalan manager's V1.

Nearly half of his 36 appearances have come from the bench, with his appearance in the Champions League round of 16 stretching to just 20 minutes from the bench and none in the final at the Stadio Olimpico.

Suddenly, when you have Lionel Messi in the form of his life, with Andres Iniesta and Xavi almost flawless behind him, sheer brilliance ceases to be enough. Pep's Barcelona might have been ideal for a player with Hleb's qualities, but they had enough already.

Yet you could see his quality in his absence from the Arsenal squad - in the 14 years since he left, they have only once come within seven points of 83. ..