Football is full of stories of players who made it against the odds, the young stars transforming potential into the real thing. But, there are even more players who never live up to that promise, who fall off the radar into a quiet and complete obscurity. Here’s the story of Lauri Dalla Valle.
Last month, our culture writer Srijandeep Das (indirectly) queried on Twitter: “Remember Lauri Dalla Valle, the next Robbie Fowler? Wonder what became of him.”
I felt surprised by the tweet, not least because it has been eight years since Dalla Valle left Liverpool. When the post popped up on my feed, I was in the middle of a writing project here in Finland. “Hey, I remember reading something about that guy not too long ago. Like he quit the game or something,” I thought. I halted what I was doing and performed a quick Google search. He had indeed retired in June, the same month the Russian hullabaloo preoccupied everyone’s minds.
I realised that for every Fábio Paím, there’s a Lauri Dalla Valle. A once-promising man (I presume), yet not promising enough to earn a mention or a follow once falling off the radar. Going unnoticed, unmarked and uneverything before retiring without a fuss.