Theo Walcott: The dutiful, diligent but unfulfilled servant

Theo Walcott is set to leave Arsenal after 12 years at the club. He was a dutiful, diligent, but ultimately unfulfilled servant who should be both respected and regretted.

The career of a footballer is never smooth. It is callous, unpredictable; it has its peaks and its troughs. Its joys, its jubilations; its trials and its tribulations. Football is, after all, a sport. That is why we all love it. The thrill of the victory; the pain of the defeat. One is not quite so impactful without the other.

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There are few players that have experienced the cliched roller-coaster ride more Theo Walcott. The bright young spark. The World Cup at 16. The world, seemingly, at his feet. Hattricks and trophies, goals and glory, all littered by the usual suspects: injuries, flailing form, losses in confidence, abuse from the fans, rejected by his teammates and his managers. There is little that Walcott has not both endured and enjoyed.

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And so, as he prepares to traverse the country for pastures new, only the second time in his lengthy career that he has ever done so — the first time being when Arsenal signed him in January 2006 from his boyhood Southampton –, it is natural to reflect on his time in North London with both reverence and regret.

The uncomfortable balance between lacking what was perhaps promised and gaining what few ever achieve is one that Walcott has tip-toed along beautifully. This is a player who was heralded as England’s future, on more than one occasion. He was elevated to hero status as a fresh-faced, tender-hearted, green-minded 16-year-old. Perhaps to his detriment, Walcott had the world thought of him. But he never quite conquered it.

If his story, though, were to end there, then it would belie his diligence, his dutiful servanthood, his work ethic, his commitment to a club that shunned him time and time again. Walcott, now it is all said and done, has scored 108 goals for Arsenal. That is not a figure to be baulked at.

Walcott, for all of his flaws and his faults, was a man of character and intelligence. He may not have played the same thinking man’s game on the pitch, but he was eloquent in interviews, astute in his work with the media, and always respectful of the fans, even during times of rather distasteful criticism and abuse.

Perhaps fittingly, his most celebrated moment came on a stretcher. Arsenal were playing Tottenham Hotspur in the third round of the FA Cup. It was, as always, a tempestuous, fiery affair. Walcott only stoked that fire. After suffering a knee injury, Walcott, as he sat on the stretcher and was carried past the Spurs fans, painted what is now perhaps his most famous image: Two fingers pointed up with his right hand; curled fingers and thumb with his left hand to make a zero. The score was 2-0 to the Arsenal. Walcott did not let the Spurs fans forget it.

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Injuries, inconsistencies, insistence and stubbornness to return. That is the story of Walcott’s Arsenal career. It is both a sad and happy tale, filled with celebration and commiseration. And it is those commiserations that make the celebrations all the sweeter. One does not exist without the other. Perhaps that is the lesson that Walcott’s Arsenal career imparts: Sport is both winning and losing, and neither are insignificant.