Brian Brobbey is a lesson to fans: maybe we should all be kinder to young ‘flop’ forwards
Kylian Mbappe’s brash campaign for a Ballon d’Or might just be the most noisy and desperate attempt that we’ve ever seen to rob a seat at the table of football history.
The case? He’s scored a lot of goals. The snag? None of them mattered. We can all see right though it – and the drive for votes actually outs the Real Madrid star’s lack of understanding when it comes to his own job role. If scoring goals was enough for a centre-forward, then Cristiano Ronaldo would probably still be at the Bernabeu. Hell, Raul would probably still be there, too.
Being a striker is about more than just putting the ball in the back of the net. It’s the glamorous role: the full stop at the end of a move, the headline on the back of a paper. But world-class centre-forwards in this day and age are not defined by their goals. Do we really need to keep saying it?
And thus, Mbappe’s one-eyed crusade for someone, anyone, to recognise him in a league with Ousmane Dembele has become the most outrageous heist carried out by a Frenchman since Regis Le Bris signed a forward of Brian Brobbey’s quality for a newly-promoted team.
Not that anyone said so at the time. Sunderland’s scattergun summer of 2025 very much had the feel of throwing enough at a wall in the hope something would stick. Granit Xhaka was inspired and Robin Roefs a shrewd spot, while the likes of Arthur Masuaku and Bertrand Traore seemed like daft ideas to fill squad quota.
Most of us had Brobbey in the second pile: a once-tipped bull in a china shop who had impressed at Ajax, flopped at RB Leipzig, then flopped once again back at Ajax, with the Amsterdammers relieved to see the back of him for a second time when the Black Cats greenlit a £20 million investment.
We were all varying degrees of wrong.
It’s easy to say after a hat-trick against Manchester City: in fact, no one in the Premier League generated a higher amount of Expected Goals (xG) than Brobbey last weekend, apart from Sunderland. But it’s been a year’s worth of this now. He was a key reason that Le Bris’s team could actually get up the pitch. He was the Netherlands’ best attacker at the World Cup. And a week prior to battering City, Brobbey absolutely terrorised Ezri Konsa and Gabriel – perhaps the best defensive duo in the league right now – and he’s maybe the only man who’s given Gabriel that much of trouble in the last two years, is Erling Haaland.
Yet you’ll notice that we haven’t mentioned his seven goals in the Premier League last term: a respectable number for a No.9 at a newly-promoted outfit, in his first season in English football. Because, frankly, the goals pale in comparison to everything else.
Brobbey is horrible to play against. He’s Diego Costa with a conscience; he’s Memphis Depay without social media ambitions. He’s under 6ft tall, yet built from steel, able to wrap himself around a centre-back and trap the ball. He is unselfish, unflappable, unfoulable, un-push-over-able.
That’s the role of a striker: it’s not just trademark celebrations and notches on WhoScored. It’s bringing team-mates into the game, running channels for an hour before you’re found and literally barging into brick walls to get a kick. And perhaps now we can all see that it’s not a role for kids.
Brobbey was criticised because he wasn’t prolific in front of goal – but then how many lone centre-forwards under 21 are? Haaland. That’s about it.
Mbappe played out wide or in a front two in his early years. Harry Kane broke through at 21 with such suspicion that the “one-season wonder” flak became a running joke. Ousmane Dembele and Raphinha have been converted to centre-forward late in life. Julian Alvarez has never been a lone striker; neither was Marcus Rashford.
And every other young centre-forward has faced their own fate: mocked, like Brobbey, or flopping entirely somewhere. Alexander Isak was driven out of Borussia Dortmund with five matches in yellow-and-black. Hugo Ekitike wasn’t given enough time at Paris Saint-Germain. Rasmus Hojlund failed in England, as Endrick appears to be struggling at Real Madrid. Vitor Roque was a disappointment at Barcelona. Nicolas Jackson wasn’t good enough for Chelsea. Kai Havertz has been much maligned his entire career – and only in the past 18 months has it become clearer that actually, he’s all right.
Who will be next? Nick Woltemade has left the Premier League after a single season: was he really that bad, or was he never really ready? Is Manchester United wonderkid Chido Obi deemed to be the next Freddy Adu, or are we just putting too much pressure on him?
Fabio Silva was, at one stage, one of the worst signings that the league had ever seen, with Wolverhampton Wanderers paying £35m for a teenager who returned four goals in over 60 appearances, before successive loan disappointments in Belgium, the Netherlands and Glasgow. He’s now 24 and at Dortmund. He doesn’t look like the worst striker of all time.
Maybe it’s impossible to judge young strikers in the same way that we do other positions. It’s perhaps easier to play at full-back when you’re 18, or as part of a tight-knit midfield unit than it is to flog yourself up front for an hour-and-a-half, and affect the game with a game or assist.
We were certainly over-harsh on Brobbey. There are plenty of strikers younger than him that can learn from his journey – and several older who perhaps should take note, too.
