James Rodriguez found his smile again

For too long, James Rodriguez didn’t have much to smile about. Things weren’t going well for him at Real Madrid, and his form suffered for a long time because of it. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t productive, and he wasn’t anywhere near the quality of player he had become famous for being.

Gone was the exuberant, happy young man who couldn’t stop grinning ear-to-ear as he broke out at Monaco and Real Madrid, and won the Golden Boot at the 2014 World Cup with Colombia. In his place was a quiet, sulking, shell of his former self, who could occasionally play well.

It started when Rafa Benitez took the reins at Real Madrid, because it was quickly apparent that he and James just didn’t quite fit each other. The ever-rigid Spanish manager tried to shoehorn his Colombian playmaker into a role that just didn’t fit him. James’ form suffered terribly for it, and eventually his playing time did as well. You could tell whenever he was on the pitch that he was badly dispirited, and unfortunately, it didn’t change like many hoped it would after Zinedine Zidane took over as manager.

Sure, James enjoyed the run to the Champions League title. But injuries and not really having a clean fit in Zidane’s tactics cut deeper into his playing time, and that continued into last season, when he played just 22 La Liga matches and made six Champions League appearances. He didn’t even make the squad for the Champions League final. Things were bad for James at Real Madrid, and his trademark smile was long gone.

That sulking and frustration seemed to carry over to his time with the Colombian national team as well, and James struggled to show his old flair and skill on a consistent basis. Without their keystone player able to lift them as he once did, they struggled, ultimately qualifying to the World Cup without having to go through a playoff, but not by much and only by absolutely grinding through many of their matches.

But this past summer, James Rodriguez was given a lifeline — a loan to Bayern Munich.

Sure, things started slowly for James at Bayern. The whole damn team started slowly, ultimately ending in the firing of manager Carlo Ancelotti. But when Jupp Heynckes took over, he recognized that the tricky winger had something significant to offer his team, and he started playing him more often, and in the kind of role as a slashing, disruptive number 10 with freedom to roam and that made James so successful earlier in his career.

He started smiling on the pitch again.

It took a little bit of time, but slowly you could see the life coming back into James. He started playing a little faster, a little looser, with a little more flair. He was having fun, for the first time in two years. James looked happy and confident for the first time in two years, and the results came with it.

That turnaround was on display in full force against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, when he set up two gorgeous first-half goals and was generally a massive pain in the rear end of PSG’s defense for his entire time on the pitch.

It was one of the best all-around performances we’ve seen from James in a long time, and it’s been simply wonderful to see such a likable player who had been in a rut for so long show off his best self again.

It’s a great sign for Colombia as well, who got drawn into a tough World Cup group. James’ playmaking skills and incisive style of play will be a huge asset for them. The tough-nosed defenses of Japan and Senegal would be difficult to break down with James playing at low confidence as he had been for so long, and his ability to play high-pace, free-wheeling football will be invaluable in a game that will be more open like a matchup between Colombia and Poland has the potential to become. Their chances at making another deep World Cup run are much higher with a smiling James than they are with a sulking James, so their fans will be the happiest people on earth to see him playing like this.

Simply put, a happy James makes his teams better, at both the club and international levels, but more than that, for fans of the game as a whole it’s just great to see a player like him getting back to his best self. He’s the kind of player who’s just easy to enjoy watching, with his infectious energy. There’s no arrogance, there’s no swagger, there’s no “I’m better than you” attitude. There’s just sheer joy for the game, something we don’t get to see enough of in sports sometimes.

James Rodriguez looks like he’s having fun again, and that makes this silly sport a better thing.