Paulo Dybala is a frustrating player. There is a particular kind of pain reserved for good but not quite good enough, and the Argentine forward emulates just that.
Across 13 seasons spent primarily in Serie A, Dybala has netted 198 goals and 95 assists.
If we count the extra 10 goals and assists that came from 40 caps with the Argentinian badge, he grabbed 304 goal contributions and counting across his career. Those stats make me shake my head.
They look, well, average, and compared to the entire tier of players that sit just below Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the numbers look even worse. Dybala is completely out of place in a room with Neymar, Robert Lewandowski or Luis Suarez.
But the stats don’t really do Dybala much justice.
Dybala’s early career — and the YouTube highlight videos I fell in love with — are incredibly top-heavy. Under the gloss of his incredible left foot, slicked back hair and iconic celebration, it’s easy to imagine a world where Dybala is still at the top of the league.
At age 21, the sky was the limit for Dybala. He didn’t exactly burst onto the scene, but, after notching 23 goal contributions during his fourth year at Palermo F.C., Dybala secured a big move to Juventus. For the next three years, the world witnessed all that Dybala could offer.
32 goals and assists in 2015-16, 27 in 2016-17 and 30 in 2017-18. Dybala was everything the Italian giants could ask for. He had come off the best season of his career in 2018, one in which Juventus won the Serie A and the Coppa Italia and fell just one win short of the treble. To top it off, they announced the signing of his friend Ronaldo from Real Madrid.
But Dybala was never quite the same after Ronaldo joined.
Dybala never again scored more than 20 goals in his final four years at Juventus. The quality was still there — 17 and 15 goal seasons came in 2019-20 and 2021-22 respectively — but Dybala wasn’t Juventus’ star anymore. Transfer rumors surrounded Dybala, with injuries and Ronaldo’s arrival forcing him out of position, and soon out of the spotlight.
But perhaps most importantly, Dybala was always a luxury player. You fell in love with how he played the game, not his results.
Ronaldo, Messi,Neymar, Lewandowski and Suarez were all inevitable, bona fide superstars. Dybala was a spark in the pan. In his day, Dybala was incredible, but he never bent the game, nor did he have a system built around him.
Now, his career at Juventus wasn’t bad. A season with 26 goals, five Serie A titles, four Coppa Italias, two Supercoppa Italianas and a UEFA Champions League runners-up medal are honors many players dream of.
Even still, when Dybala left Juventus at age 29 to join Roma, it felt like an unfinished story. It didn’t help that he never quite found his Juventus form there, where he has struggled with a long list of minor injuries. At age 32, he is still playing and still capable of a flash of brilliance, but never in conversations.
His international career, too, was much the same. Four goals across 40 games only hinted at the quality present, with Dybala constantly competing with Messi for playing time. Sure, he won the World Cup in 2022, but he started just one game in that competition.
Just like Neymar, it’s difficult when the competition is a compilation of the greatest players ever. Neymar had his struggles, and he didn’t reach his true potential either. The difference is that Dybala left things on the table; Neymar didn’t.
It’s easy to paint your own ambitions on a player like Dybala. Take me, for example. I’m currently studying abroad in France, and after practice on Friday, one of the players asked me if I was playing Division III or Division I.
I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. Quite literally, I didn’t know what to say in French. More importantly, though, it made me a little sad. For a while in high school, I could see the vision of playing college soccer. In fact, I was pretty close — one offer that never materialized; two walk-on spots at liberal arts colleges I never got into.
It sounds pretty similar to Dybala. I was good enough to be in the system, but never the first-choice option.
So I lied. I told my friend I played DIII, but wasn’t getting too many minutes, to his chagrin. I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about how things could have been different. Perhaps if I were a few inches taller or had taken things a bit more seriously, I could still have been playing the sport I love.
We can look back at that one tryout when we had a debilitating head cold and didn’t make that travel team, or at the guest player tournament experience that amounted to nothing.
The truth is, most of us have been Dybala before.
Being second is painful. The belief tends to kill you because you were close enough to clearly see what you wanted. But pretty good doesn’t matter. Someone was better. And that idea seems to matter far more than any of your efforts. It’s a frustrating, lingering type of pain.
Dybala was pretty close. I’ve been pretty close, and I’m sure you have too. But isn’t that life?
Otto Fritton PZ ’27 –– unfortunately dubbed “OF” by his close friends –– is an avid Peanuts fan. He finds Charles M. Schulz’s portrayal of Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl fantastic; the perfect example of unrequited love. He wonders if Charlie will ever truly succeed, and suspects that’s exactly the point.
Facebook Comments