It turned out to be among the most ill-fated statements of the year. "We have no doubt about [his] fitness," declared then-Barcelona director of football Andoni Zubizarreta at the presentation of Thomas Vermaelen last August. Sitting on the left of Zubizarreta was a talented defender, but his unveiling had quickly become a defensive exercise.
The Belgian had arrived with a thigh injury picked up at the World Cup, a tournament that had come on the back of a season largely spent on the bench at Arsenal. The season before that was extremely mixed.