LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Bears general manager Ryan Pace said Tuesday that he’s committed to using the next few months to make hard decisions and take an honest look at Chicago’s roster.
The Bears need a serious dose of honesty after they failed to reach the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons, but will it happen? The same day, Pace expressed confidence in former high draft picks, including quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, linebacker Leonard Floyd and tight end Adam Shaheen, all three of whom have failed to live up to expectations.
Any honest evaluation of the Bears’ roster would reveal that. There is no question that the Bears were one of the NFL’s biggest disappointments in 2019. Fresh off a 12-4 record and division championship the previous season under first-time head coach Matt Nagy, the Bears were legitimate Super Bowl contenders. But Chicago’s entire operation underwhelmed, especially on offense, where Nagy — the playcaller — and Trubisky floundered.
What’s next? Here are the four most pressing issues facing the Bears as their offseason begins:
Offensive identity: Nagy’s 2020 starts now. He has to figure out what scheme is compatible with Trubisky, who rarely plays well against good defenses. That’s no way to win a championship. Nagy has incredibly high standards at quarterback after coaching Alex Smith and Patrick Mahomes (for one year) in Kansas City. Trubisky is not Smith, who often ran Andy Reid’s system to perfection, or Mahomes, the reigning MVP, but he is a former No. 2 overall pick. When is he going to start playing like one? For that to happen, Nagy needs to lower those standards and accept Trubisky for what he is: a great athlete but a below-average pocket passer with so-so accuracy. The organization is stuck because of Pace’s loyalty to Trubisky. Either it’s going to work with Trubisky and the Bears get back on track, or everyone’s job is in jeopardy after the 2020 season.
Mitchell Trubisky might have surgery on his non-throwing shoulder in the offseason. Mike DiNovo/USA TODAY Sports
Quarterback room: Trubisky remains the starting quarterback. Fine, but he needs competition.
Run, run, run: The Bears have to establish an identity on the ground. Offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich and offensive line coach Harry Hiestand — both heavily involved in designing run plays — were dismissed. That’s the unfortunate reality in the NFL. When a team underachieves, coaches are fired. However, to exclusively blame Helfrich or Hiestand for Chicago’s repeated failure to run the ball would be foolish. That was a collective failure. Nagy has to be better. The offensive line has to block better. The running backs need to play better. The good news is that the Bears have talent in the backfield with David Montgomery and Tarik Cohen. The Bears have to open up space for Cohen in the middle of the field. Trubisky is an excellent runner, and despite the risk of injury, Nagy has to play to Trubisky’s strengths. It isn’t ideal, but that’s a risk the Bears might have to take. There’s just too much evidence that Trubisky will never be a great pocket passer. He needs the pocket to be moved, he needs the gimmicks like the hurry-up, and he needs to run.
The rivalry as we know it took off in October 2012. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two greatest players of their generation, traded goals like punches in a heavyweight bout. There were 98,000 people in attendance at the Camp Nou. Most of them had come to show solidarity with the independence movement that was sweeping through Catalonia and to rail against a certain history of persecution. They were treated to a different kind of history instead.
Messi and Ronaldo had played against each other many times before, but not like this. Ronaldo struck in the 23rd minute, beating Victor Valdes at his near post with a ferocious strike. Eight minutes later, Messi responded with a ruthless volley from close range. Then Messi scored again. Then Ronaldo. El Clasico went as they went, ending 2-2. What was supposed to be a night of political grandstanding became a celebration of world-class talent. Messi and Ronaldo had separated themselves from the rest. “No one can keep up with them,” the Guardian’s Sid Lowe wrote at the time, “except each other.”
The rivalry intensified over the next few years, not out of animosity or hatred, but out of pure competitive drive. Every match seemed to determine the fate of the Ballon d’Or. For a decade, no one won the award but them.
It was their contrasting styles that made them such great adversaries. Messi navigated tight spaces to reach his destination; Ronaldo barged right through. Which of the two you liked better said a lot about the kind of football you appreciated.
“The only thing they have in common is goals,” former Spain coach Vicente del Bosque once said.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP / Getty
Their clubs mirrored their differences. Messi was made in Barcelona’s image: short and intuitive, quick and exacting, a cerebral and cunning footballer who passed as well as he shot and saw things before they happened. Ronaldo’s directness and barreling athleticism, on the other hand, made him a perfect match for Real Madrid, who built teams to win, not to entertain. Messi and Ronaldo weren’t only rivals, they were complete opposites.
It’s not the same now that Ronaldo is playing in Serie A with Juventus. The comparisons are less obvious. They spent a decade jockeying for position in La Liga, moving up and down the leaderboards, facing off regularly. Then suddenly, they lost their sparring partner.
“I miss Cristiano in Spain,” Messi said. “It was lovely having him here, even though it annoyed me seeing him win so many titles. It would be great if he was still here.”
Messi gave Ronaldo a challenge when no one else could, and vice versa. Ronaldo was older than Messi and thus took the early lead in the race to immortality. But Messi surpassed Ronaldo. He did things with the ball no one had seen since Diego Maradona. Barcelona were winning everything, including an unprecedented treble in 2009, and Messi was at the center of it all.
It may have seemed like Messi was merely a cog in a well-oiled machine. He’s faced those accusations his entire career. It’s true he found greater harmony with his teammates at Barcelona than he ever did with his countrymen, and it’s probably why he’s struggled so much in the international game with Argentina. Schooled to interpret the game as a series of sequences and to understand the geometry of the pitch, Barcelona players could understand the things he did. In reality, Messi transformed Barcelona, leading the club through its most successful period of all time.
Pep Guardiola did his part to help Messi become the tour de force he is today, teaching him how to exploit space and burst into channels with his trademark speed. It was Guardiola’s aim to get Messi on the ball as much as possible. He considered it a crime whenever Messi loitered without much to do. Messi was too good to spend his career hoping for chances. Why wait when he could create them himself?
But not much was made of what actually made Messi so great. He just was. Guardiola merely guided him in the right direction.
Ronaldo’s success was easier to measure. Stories were told of how many sit-ups he could do on a given day, about his strict diet, about the amount of sleep he’d get. Ronaldo was more human than Messi and showed more emotion because of it. He goaded the media into making the comparisons. He seemed to feel the rivalry more than Messi did.
Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno / Getty Images Sport / Getty
Fans chanted “Messi” at him because they knew it would bother him. And it did. It bothered him when he was second-best, when all the hard work fell short. Ronaldo skipped award ceremonies when he found out he’d lost. He defended himself when things didn’t go according to plan, and in doing so, he came off as arrogant, self-absorbed, hostile. He was only ever building himself up because people tried to tear him down.
“Do you know what (Messi) was doing this time last year?” Ronaldo snapped after fans of Denmark heckled him during a match at Euro 2012. “He was going out of the Copa America in the quarterfinals.”
Messi had won four consecutive Ballons d’Or by the end of 2012, and when Fabio Cannavaro awarded it to him that December, Ronaldo sat there and pursed his lips. It hurt him. He’d scored 63 goals in that calendar year, a personal best and a ridiculous sum on its own. He just happened to do it the same year Messi hit 91.
It was Ronaldo who breathed life into the rivalry, giving it a sense of urgency that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. He was the one who moved to Spain to challenge himself, to go up against the very best. If his transfer is no longer the most expensive, it remains one of the most important.
His relationship with Madrid was mutually beneficial. He needed Madrid to chase down Messi, and Madrid needed him to chase down Barcelona. And as Madrid became a greater threat to Barcelona, so too did Ronaldo to Messi. He was a selfish player at Manchester United, a winger who relied on stepovers and tricks to accomplish everything. But over nine years in the Spanish capital, Ronaldo evolved.
He used his speed to facilitate Madrid’s unbelievable counterattack and learned that he too could drop deep and link up play. Some of his best moments were typical Ronaldo – he seemed to levitate when he lept for the ball and he punished goalkeepers with a barrage of shots – but there was more nuance to his game than there had been before. Later, he even accepted time on the bench so he could spring to life at the business end of each competition.
When Ronaldo tied Messi with a fifth Ballon d’Or in 2017, it was personal redemption. His life’s work had built to that moment. He had won a trophy with his country – something Messi failed to do on multiple occasions – and led Madrid to the second of three consecutive Champions League titles. Entering the quarterfinals of the Champions League that season, Messi had 11 goals in the competition. Ronaldo only had two. But in a flash, Messi was out, and Ronaldo scored eight over the next two rounds against Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich. He fired two more against Juventus in the final itself. Ronaldo had roared back.
“With Messi, the fight continues,” he said after being presented the trophy. “In a good way.”
Alexander Hassenstein – FIFA / FIFA / Getty
Football had never had anything like this before. Pele and Maradona played in different eras and on different continents, making it harder to judge their achievements side by side. Messi and Ronaldo were entering their prime at the same time and gunning for the same titles.
Together, they elevated El Clasico, defining it just as they came to define their clubs, partly because they faced each other so damn much. In 2011, four of those Clasicos came over an 18-day span, in three separate competitions. Madrid beat Barcelona to win the Copa del Rey, but that was all they could muster. The Blaugrana held Los Blancos in La Liga, claiming a precious point en route to the title, and edged them 3-1 on aggregate in the Champions League semifinals. Messi and Ronaldo, of course, combined for five of the seven goals in those encounters.
El Clasico was big before they arrived, rich in symbolism, politics, and rivalry. But the more Messi and Ronaldo upped the ante, the more the contest became about them and less about the politics that had shaped it in the first place. Fans traveled from around the world to watch them go at it. The crowds became less local and more diverse. Hundreds of millions tuned in across almost 200 countries. Messi and Ronaldo globalized El Clasico and turned it into a referendum on who was better.
Every match, every season was an arms race. Messi scored 369 league goals in the 2010s and collected 23 trophies; Ronaldo hit 335 and added 19. Ronaldo has more Champions League goals and assists than anyone in history. Messi has the most league goals ever. He’s two years younger, too. The statistics prove how close they were, but different stats tell different stories, liking choosing your own adventure.
They did this for the entire decade, going back and forth and topping their own records. Only they could outdo each other. If only they could do it for another 10 years.
Free-agent running back Mark Walton is facing a second accusation of domestic violence, with the woman’s attorney saying police have yet to interview her regarding the alleged March attack.
In March, Walton allegedly punched the woman multiple times while they were driving through Miami Gardens, and he allegedly dragged her by the foot and hit her multiple more times after she had gotten out of the car. She suffered a swollen and bleeding lip.
The woman’s attorney told the Miami Herald that Miami Gardens police didn’t seek an interview until November, when Walton was arrested in Davie, Florida, after he allegedly pushed the woman, who was pregnant, into a wall and punched her several times in the face and head.
Walton has denied the November allegations and is awaiting trial in that case. His defense attorney, Michael Gottlieb, declined to comment on the March allegations.
With the January transfer window officially open, we take a look at 20 high-profile players who could be on the move this month.
Premier League
Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
Michael Regan / Getty Images Sport / Getty
Age: 26 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: £120M+
On multiple occasions this term, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer felt compelled to defend Pogba’s professionalism while he deals with ankle issues and illness. Why would Solskjaer do that if Pogba’s absences were entirely legitimate? Perhaps the midfielder is still unsettled and eyeing a departure from Old Trafford. Pogba’s links with Real Madrid – like his injuries – are persistent.
Most likely destination: Remains at Manchester United until summer
Eriksen has entered the final six months of his Tottenham deal so can ink a pre-contract agreement to join a foreign club on a free transfer. Spurs will be keen to get something for him now rather than see him leave for nothing in the summer. The Dane could be a key piece for teams chasing silverware, such as Inter, or for clubs known for rash spending, like Manchester United.
Most likely destination: Inter
Nathan Ake (Bournemouth)
Age: 24 | Position: Central defender | Estimated value: £40M
Chelsea wisely slotted a £40-million buyback option into Ake’s £20-million transfer to Bournemouth in 2017, according to The Athletic’s Simon Johnson and Liam Twomey. With his composure and slick distribution, Ake is an archetypal modern center-back who seems a neat fit for Frank Lampard and Jody Morris’ youthful revolution at Stamford Bridge.
Most likely destination: Chelsea
Granit Xhaka (Arsenal)
James Williamson – AMA / Getty Images Sport / Getty
Age: 27 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: £25M
For too long, Xhaka looked like an imposter at one of Europe’s biggest clubs. His agent’s recent claim that his client was set to join Hertha Berlin, then, made a lot of sense. But, since Mikel Arteta was hired as Arsenal boss, Xhaka has started two of three available matches and – whisper it – performed quite well. Could Arteta do the unthinkable and turn Xhaka into a serviceable midfielder?
Roy Hodgson indicated it was Zaha’s “big heart for the club” that allowed him to play at Norwich City on Wednesday despite lacking match fitness. However, Zaha asked to leave last summer, and Hodgson admitted before the Norwich game that a big bid would need to be taken seriously by Eagles directors. Pedro and Willian are nearing the end of their respective deals, so Chelsea are unsurprisingly linked.
Most likely destination: Remains at Crystal Palace until summer
The World Cup-winning frontman will be subject of numerous transfer reports this January. He’s started just two top-flight matches under Lampard, and his vast experience and 78 Premier League goals will tempt numerous clubs. Will a rival English side meet Giroud’s wage demands? Will an MLS outfit make him its marquee player? Will he return to France or join the Scudetto race in Italy?
Most likely destination: West Ham United
David Silva (Manchester City)
Simon Stacpoole/Offside / Offside / Getty
Age: 33 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: Free
We already know the magician will suit up for a club other than Manchester City next season, but his destination is up in the air. The midfielder, who turns 34 on Wednesday, has previously stated his intention to play for Las Palmas, who hail from his native island of Gran Canaria, but there are rumors that he will instead be a headline act for Inter Miami, the David Beckham-owned MLS franchise.
Most likely destination: Las Palmas (in summer via pre-contract agreement)
La Liga
Gareth Bale (Real Madrid)
Age: 30 | Position: Winger | Estimated value: Too much
Bale’s age, injury record, and questionable dedication to Real Madrid in recent years make it unlikely that a club will stump up the fee and wages required to trigger the Welshman’s move. Tottenham are linked with Bale, but a more cost-effective and long-term option would be someone like Eberechi Eze, the young virtuoso lighting up the Championship with Queens Park Rangers.
Most likely destination: Remains at Real Madrid until summer
Ivan Rakitic (Barcelona)
Age: 31 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: €25M
No longer an automatic choice in midfield thanks to Arthur’s emergence and the signing of Dutch stud Frenkie de Jong, Rakitic has started just five league matches this season for Barcelona. He’s stated his desire to remain at the Camp Nou, deeming it the “perfect place” for him in December, but sitting on the bench has a funny way of changing those feelings.
It would be difficult for Atletico Madrid to recoup the €72 million that they paid for Lemar in 2018, but Marca’s David Garcia Medina understands Los Colchoneros could cut their losses to free up funds for a striker. Lemar hasn’t scored or assisted for his club since April and has always appeared out of sync with manager Diego Simeone’s conservative approach.
Most likely destination: Arsenal
Serie A
Emre Can (Juventus)
Age: 25 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: €30M
Already furious over his exclusion from Juventus’ Champions League squad, Emre Can has largely been stapled to the bench this season, making just seven appearances – two starts – in Serie A. The feisty German was a key member of Max Allegri’s side but is rightfully looking elsewhere given his lack of chances under Maurizio Sarri, with Manchester United potentially offering an escape route.
Out of contract at the end of the campaign, it seems unlikely that the pint-sized Belgian will still be plying his trade with Napoli next season. Reborn as a center-forward during Sarri’s tenure at the club, Mertens has now been surpassed on the depth chart by Arkadiusz Milik. While a club in need of an immediate scoring punch could do worse than make a play for the 32-year-old, the opportunity to wait six months and get him for free is too good to pass up.
Most likely destination: Remains at Napoli until summer
One day, Borussia Dortmund will make a lot of money on Sancho. But, even after Erling Braut Haaland’s recent arrival, it’s unlikely the club will offload until the summer. The club hierarchy will be reluctant to hinder the team’s push for domestic honors, and Sancho’s asking price could reach untold levels with a strong showing for England at Euro 2020.
Most likely destination: Remains at Borussia Dortmund until summer
Were it not for the absurd scoring exploits of Robert Lewandowski, we’d all be salivating over the season that Werner is putting together; the Stuttgart-born forward has 18 Bundesliga tallies thus far, just one behind his Polish counterpart. RB Leipzig have a legitimate chance at capturing the German crown – they sit atop the table, after all – and would be mad to sell their most prolific player prior to the summer window. In June, though, all bets are off.
Most likely destination: Remains at RB Leipzig until summer
Dayot Upamecano (RB Leipzig)
Age: 21 | Position: Central defender | Estimated value: €55M
It seemed as though a day couldn’t go by this past summer without a new rumor linking Upamecano to one of Europe’s top clubs. Naturally, that trail has gone somewhat cold during the season. But with the window open once more, expect to hear about all the heavy hitters making inquiries over the young French defender, who has been tipped as a future superstar.
Most likely destination: Remains at RB Leipzig until summer
Cavani has never done anything wrong at Paris Saint-Germain, but he’s often been the odd one out. The club’s all-time top scorer hasn’t dipped below 16 goals in a Ligue 1 season, and it’s that kind of ruthlessness that has attracted Atletico Madrid. His advancing years and PSG’s desire to get rid of him – they have far too many attackers – make Cavani an affordable proposition.
The limited options behind Tammy Abraham in Chelsea’s strikeforce – Lampard clearly doesn’t think much of Giroud and Michy Batshuayi – could prompt a pricey swoop for Dembele, the former Fulham and Celtic marksman. The Frenchman is currently with underachieving Lyon, where he has netted 10 times in 16 Ligue 1 appearances this campaign.
Most likely destination: Chelsea
Rest of the world
Donny van de Beek (Ajax)
Age: 22 | Position: Central midfielder | Estimated value: €55M
Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt were already drawing attention before Ajax’s 2018-19 Champions League run but, by the time of the club’s semifinal elimination, Van de Beek had also established himself as one of the continent’s preeminent prodigies. The midfielder says he intends to stay at Ajax this January, but it could be a very different story if Real Madrid come calling.
Most likely destination: Remains at Ajax until summer
Amid high-profile deals that saw Haaland and Takumi Minamino join Dortmund and Liverpool, respectively, Hwang Hee-chan has largely flown under the radar at Salzburg. But the South Korean showcased his explosive skill set in the Champions League and should become the focal point of the attack for the remainder of the season, meaning any move will likely have to wait until June.
Most likely destination: Remains at Red Bull Salzburg until summer
Gabigol’s move to Europe didn’t go well. Following his €30-million switch from Santos to Inter, Gabigol mustered only 113 minutes and one goal in the 2016-17 Serie A term and was even worse during his subsequent loan stay with Benfica. But he’s rekindled his love for football back in Brazil, where, in 2019, he scored 43 goals and won the Copa Libertadores with Flamengo. The Brazilian giants are desperate to turn his loan paperwork into a permanent deal.
