Stop the count – Aymeric Laporte has just won the 2024 Puskas Award

Aymeric Laporte slyly slipping off the face of the earth to play his football in Saudi Arabia was surprising and disheartening in equal measures – until now.

When Manchester City parted with a club record £57million to prize him away from Athletic Club in 2018, the world of football was in agreement that they’d probably just underpaid for perhaps the most promising – and already talented – young centre-back in the game.

Leaving six years later as a treble winner with six Premier League titles, a Champions League and countless other accolades to his name, suggesting that he flopped in Manchester would be unfair.

Regardless of what esteem we all held him in, he’s achieved more in six years than I will in the next 60. That is, of course, unless you consider the weakest ankles in all of five-a-side in the North West to be some kind of extraordinary achievement.

Nobody can deny the fact that the French-born Spain international (still weird, isn’t it?) didn’t achieve the lot and make the most of his time at City. He quite literally did exactly that.

But his departure in the summer of 2023 still felt too soon. It still felt like – despite all the honours – Laporte’s story at the top of European football wasn’t finished.

Don’t tell Cody Rhodes that – he’ll be coming to finish it for him.

Leaving City to sign for Al Nassr at 29, Laporte turned his back on the very pinnacle of the game we love before he’d even reached his peak and did so with many feeling like they still haven’t seen him at his very best.

Injuries, inconsistency and Pep Guardiola’s batsh*t crazy rotation policy meant that he found regular football hard to come by – particularly towards the end – but does that mean he was overrated? Far from it.

It’s for that reason that