There's a certain inevitability to physical decline.
In football - as in life - once manageable and menial duties become increasingly arduous as faculties begin to abandon their hosts. Adroitness becomes clumsiness, and abilities transform into inabilities.
For footballers, it happens on a larger stage. The carpenter, whose progressively deteriorating back now inhibits formerly straightforward tasks, does so in solitude. The energetic winger, whose pace now limits the capacity to beat defenders, does so under the watchful eye of pundits and supporters alike.
There is an enduring permanence to the abandonment of talents once inherent, and then there's also drops in form based on a host of factors like fitness and injuries, tactics and formations, motivations and mindsets. Sometimes it can be futile to discern between the two.
This season, a quartet of world-class stars are mired by disappointing campaigns, prompting questions that consider both temporary drops in form and mellowing talents.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Last season, Cristiano Ronaldo scored 37 goals between La Liga and the Champions League, as the bronzed purveyor of undulating abs bolstered an already congested trophy cabinet. Fast forward to 2017-18, and Ronaldo's Champions League-best six goals paper over the cracks of an uncharacteristically horrid league campaign.
Through 11 matches, the Euro 2016 winner has 48 shots on target and one goal. Lionel Messi has 69 shots on target with a dozen goals. The tricky Argentine needs to miss his next 507 shots to have the same conversion rate as his eternal rival. As tired as the comparison of the two has become, this particular example does display the current rift in form between football's two biggest stars.
Ronaldo's form is also having a negative consequence on the club. When Real Madrid won a first La Liga crown in five seasons last year with a scant three defeats, Los Blancos scored 106 times in 38 matches, good enough for a rate of 2.79 goals per match. This time around, Real already has two losses in 11 matches, averaging two goals per match. Last year, the Portuguese accounted for 23.6 percent of Los Blancos goals; this season the 32-year-old is responsible for 4.5 percent of the club's tallies.
FIFA's Player of the Year took a thinly veiled swipe at his club's transfer strategy last summer after slumping to defeat at Tottenham. Perhaps he should be concerned about his own standing and not those keeping Real in league contention.
Luis Suarez
Like Ronaldo, Barcelona forward Luis Suarez is floundering in a season of inexplicable misses. Unlike Real Madrid, Suarez's Blaugrana are flying high despite the absence of the Uruguayan's goals.
For all the technical superiority and fluid play in attack, Barcelona is profiting from resolute defending. There's a concern that sooner than later, Suarez will be needed to guide the Catalans both on the continent and domestically, and after bagging 29 of Barcelona's league-best 116 goals a year ago (25 percent), Suarez's three goals this campaign is just 10 percent of the club's total.
With Neymar gone and an injured Ousmane Dembele yet to carve his niche in a front-three, Paco Alcacer can only fill the void left by Suarez for so long. A major reason for Suarez's decline is tethered to his position on the pitch. A textbook No. 9 who profits from link-up play, Suarez's frustrations have found the 30-year-old dropping deeper to collect the ball. That shouldn't be the case for a player best served by gravitating in and around the area, a tendency marred by Alcacer's presence. In Saturday's 2-1 victory over Sevilla, Alcacer started on the right flank in a 4-4-2, but often found himself in the penalty area, forcing Suarez out wide. Dembele's return from injury should help return order to Ernesto Valverde's season, and Suarez is no stranger to short-term drops in form similar to a funk he experienced in his first full season at Liverpool.
Leonardo Bonucci
Will the real Leonardo Bonucci please stand up? After a successful spell anchoring a thriving three-man backline with Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini at Juventus, Bonucci has been abhorrent this season with AC Milan.
Bonucci moved to the San Siro as part of a shock €42-million move in the summer, and amid a period of a dozen high-profile signings courtesy of a blank cheque from incoming Chinese investment, the 30-year-old was expected to be the measured source of cohesion on a team with several new parts.
The 73-time Azzurri international has been anything but. His brutal elbow against Genoa's Aleandro Rosi and subsequent red card has been emblematic of his early-season struggles. That banning meant Bonucci missed the 2-0 defeat to Juventus. His tendency to creep out of position and failure to deliver accurate long balls - his forte with the Old Lady - has prompted criticism of the player, with pundits asserting that he's merely the product of a system. While that could be true, Bonucci was decent against Sassuolo, hinting that prosperous days may still be ahead.
Alexis Sanchez
Alexis Sanchez is arguably the best player to sport the Arsenal kit since the Gunners' late-90s-early-aughts pinnacle of Wenger ball. The 28-year-old is also the club's most unique player - a tireless talent as adept on the ball as he in recovering it - and its most important, scoring more than a third of its league goals a year ago.
Months removed from a stunning campaign, the Chilean is shockingly ordinary. He has one goal in the league to go with one in the Europa League, and for a player supposedly in the shop window, he's doing a dreadful job of selling himself. Against Manchester City on Saturday - a club who is reportedly interested in the player - his characteristically tireless pursuit of defenders in possession was decidedly pointless. El Nino Maravilla coughed up possession 15 times in the opening half, was dispossessed seven times in 90 minutes, and covered just 6.1 miles, the lowest number of any outfield player and just three more than shot-stopper Petr Cech.
Reports that linked Sanchez with a summer exit were too bountiful not to be at least partially steeped in truth, and with his current deal set to expire in the summer, Arsenal must weigh the benefits of a January sale with the pursuit of a top-four spot and Europa League glory. The way Sanchez is playing now, it's reasonable to think the two options are actually mutually inclusive.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)
