After suffering a season-ending injury in November, the No. 10 has found it difficult to regain his form, but he can bounce back from this.
Like every other Premier League season, Tottenham’s finished on May 19. However, their campaign’s turning point came six months earlier, when they lost 4-1 to Chelsea in a match when the final score seemed practically insignificant.
Upon his exclusion from Gareth Southgate’s 26-man roster, it is certain that James Maddison’s hopes of qualifying for Euro 2024 were dashed with that defeat.
Prior to the match, Spurs had set the early pace, swaggering their way to the top of the standings with Maddison, their summertime acquisition that truly embodied the new age in N17.
The club’s faith in Maddison’s inspirational abilities was demonstrated when Ange Postecoglou named him joint vice-captain with Cristian Romero and awarded him the No. 10 shirt that had been left empty by Harry Kane’s departure prior to the Brentford opener.
He proved his doubters wrong with an incredible start to the season, netting three goals and assisting on five more in his first ten games before limping off in the unfortunate London derby in his eleventh.
Like the Spurs as a whole, Madison missed nearly three months of play and was never able to reclaim the same sense of excitement that characterized those thrilling initial months. His problems in 2024 are evident by his return of one goal and four assists in 17 games following his injury. In a way, Southgate’s announcement validates what many Spurs supporters already knew would happen.
And when Postecoglou benched him for pivotal games at Anfield and Stamford Bridge in May, the players themselves would have realized that he was losing control of Southgate’s team. It was a clear indication of his declining form at a time when players such as Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer, and Eberechi Eze were about to reach their prime.
Maddison is an Englishman with pride. His most popular post on X, the previous Twitter, is a childhood photo of him sporting a red England shirt from David Beckham’s metatarsal era with a St George’s flag painted on his face.
