Chelsea: Marco van Ginkel highlights another absurdity beyond the loan army

Marco van Ginkel is finishing his second full year actually with Chelsea, by far his longest stretch since signing as a Blue in 2013. Unfortunately, that’s only because of a bizarrely prolonged recovery from injury.

With Tomas Kalas and Kenneth Omeruo at forever homes, Marco van Ginkel is an anachronism in Blue, a throwback to a different era when Chelsea bought players, possibly gave them a run-out with the team and then shuffled them around on loans despite what looks like promising and improving performances against the backdrop of complementary deficiencies at Stamford Bridge. Van Ginkel is approaching the seventh anniversary of Chelsea signing him from Vitesse. That just adds to the mystique: the Blues bought him from Vitesse and never loaned him there, despite his loan career overlapping with the pinnacle of Vitesse as “Chelsea B.”

Over the last few weeks, van Ginkel has probably spent more time on the pitch at Stamford Bridge than he has in the previous seven years. In an interview with PSV TV (PSV Eindhoven being his most recent and most successful loan club), van Ginkel said “The boys who live nearby can train in the stadium. So this is ideal for me. You only have to train on your own, so it is a bit boring.. It’s top notch in Stamford Bridge.”

As of 2012, the pitch at Stamford Bridge was 102 meters x 67 meters. Doing some quick math, this means that many more than one player could be on the pitch at a time and still maintain all but the most paranoically authoritarian definition of social distancing. But paranoid authoritarianism seems to be the order of the day, Marco van Ginkel must train alone.

Even more so than the formulaic condemnation of Jose Mourinho for training at Hadley Common with two Tottenham players last week, Marco van Ginkel’s solo sessions prove the absurdity of the restrictions currently on physical activity – professional or recreational – and work – athletic or otherwise.

Van Ginkel, of all people, would self-enforce social distancing measures during training similar to minimize the risk of re-injury.

Van Ginkel’s last game was May 6, 2018. Since then he has dealt with various iterations and sequelae of a ligament injury in his knee. Much like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, one part of him gets strong enough to cause an imbalance elsewhere in his kinetic chain, which sets off a chain reaction that ends with another trauma to the original injury site.

The last thing van Ginkel will want to do is close-in contact drills or changes of direction with his teammates and find himself even further back in the recovery. If anyone is going to insist people give him his space while they work on passing, open running and technical drills, it’s the 27-year old Dutchman.

Marco van Ginkel’s contract expires this summer. He told PSV TV that Chelsea have not started any talks with him about what comes next.

Setting aside all the football and financial uncertainty in our current moment, Chelsea may be doing that rarest of all things and completely cutting their losses on van Ginkel.

If they extend van Ginkel they will carry the responsibility and cost of rehabbing him until he is ready to go on loan again. Even if van Ginkel returned to full fitness and stayed healthy, the Blues have their most depth in van Ginkel’s position. His place in the depth chart will only drop if his regular companion in the physio room, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, returns to play sometime soon.

Even acknowledging how starved for content they must be, PSV TV would probably not check in with van Ginkel unless they were interested in having him back. He captained their team for much of the 2017/18 season, scored 31 goals in 64 games and won two Eredivisie titles in his two seasons there.

If Chelsea let him leave on a free transfer, he would be well worth the risk for PSV; and it would be hard to see van Ginkel being anything but happy about a return home and a long overdue sense of permanence.