Former West Ham United captain Kurt Zouma was always going to come under scrutiny when he made that shock switch to CFR Cluj, becoming one of the best-paid and best-known footballers in Romanian football history as a result.
And unfortunately for him, the glittering CV and his eye-watering wage means that patience and sympathy have been in extremely short supply during a punishing few months in Eastern Europe.
CFR Cluj had the Champions League in mind when signing Kurt Zouma following the expiration of his West Ham United contract. They have not graced the biggest of the European stages in well over a decade now, after all.
And by signing an eleven time France international, a Conference League and Champions League winner, and a former Premier League skipper, Cluj thought they had the man to lead them back into the elite.
It is fair to say a miserable 1-0 defeat by Petrolul Ploiesti was not what they had in mind when signing Zouma with half an eye on Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. That, a narrow loss on October 20th, remains the former West Ham United stopper’s only start for a club stuck in eleventh in the 16-team Romanian Liga I.
And who knows? That rarest of starts may also be his last.
Kurt Zouma is ’99 per cent’ likely to leave Romania already after summer West Ham United exit
Cristi Balaj, Cluj president at the time of the defender’s arrival, accepted that Zouma had to make a positive ‘first impression’ if he was to justify that near-£45,000-a-week contract.
After a difficult loan spell in Saudi Arabia, the 31-year-old would need some time to get up to speed.
Even Balaj felt that Zouma would be rearing to go by December, though. As it is, he has played only 107 minutes across Cluj’s last eleven league matches.
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And with new chief Iuliu Muresan embarking upon a period of austerity, it seems that the days of spending big on high-profile acquisitions are over before they ever really began.
“Zouma is injured. I think a winter [change] is possible. Let’s see, we have to talk to him too,” Muresan, who recently replaced Balaj in the presidential office, told Fanatik. “He’s very positive, a good guy, but we need fit players who want it.
“He wants to play, he has quality character, he has an impressive physique, but he has some problems with both knees. It’s hard for him to play football at this level anymore.
“The chances are 99 per cent that he will leave, yes.”
Zouma ‘can barely walk’ as concerns rise over his fitness and his wages
A damning reflection of a footballer who was supposed to cruise at Cluj, like a Romanian Rolls Royce.
Having suffered a series of knee injuries throughout his career, not to mention a one horrific ACL tear during his Chelsea days, is Zouma’s career really destined to end with a whimper, shortly after his 31st birthday?
While West Ham are making steps forward under Nuno Espirito Santo – a winnable selection of games are looming now on the horizon – an ambitious but ill-advised Cluj are going nowhere fast.
And after the big-dreaming Balaj was replaced by the more cautious Muresan, Chelsea icon Dan Petrescu has now been succeeded in the dugout by another coach, Daniel Pancu.
Fanatik add that Zouma is struggling to cope with Pancu’s more high-octane training sessions. And after Muresan admitted that the financial issues he inherited when taking over are ‘much more complicated’ than he initially expected, Zouma’s £45,000-a-week wages means moving on from their most high-profile signing possibly ever is a must already.
“What can I tell you about Zouma and the scandal that happened after the match between CFR Cluj and Dinamo?,” asks Cristi Coste, the Fanatik reporter speaking after the Champions League winner’s late introduction off the bench coincided with Cluj suffering a stoppage time defeat to Dinamo Bucharest.
“[The players are thinking] ‘Look at this guy who comes in to ruin our match and has a salary as much as all of us put together, even though we have three months of arrears’.
“That was the atmosphere in the locker room at CFR Cluj. The nerves started not from the fact that Dinamo turned the [the game] around, but from the way Dinamo turned it around following [Zouma’s] substitution.”
“A gentleman appeared who claimed to be a footballer; Zouma,” reporter Emil Gradinescu told Prima Sport 1, pulling no punches as he too joined the pile on.
“He has a salary of [£50k euros] per month, and Zouma turned the locker room upside down. The man can barely walk! Why are you doing this? What did you aim for with this? To give [yourself] image boost or what? You haven’t paid your employees and you’re doing these extravagant things.”
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