Cristian Montano has returned to West Ham after his having his loan spell at Swindon cut short. The teenage forward featured for the Hammers development side in a match against Gillingham on Tuesday afternoon, after Swindon Town boss Paolo Di Canio decided he would not use the Colombian in the Robins’ Johnstone’s Paint Trophy southern section quarter-final with AFC Wimbledon on Tuesday night
Montano, who has come in for heavy criticism from Di Canio during his month in Wiltshire, was due to return to Upton Park after the clash with the Dons. But following Di Canio’s announcement that he was not going to feature in the tie, the 19-year-old has returned to his parent club.
Montano and Di Canio seem to have had a clash of personalities during the loan stint with Swindon. Having been called lazy by the Irons legend in training and being left out of the majority of games the Colombian forward returned to West Ham frustrated. Perhaps in hindsight it was a bad move to bring him away from Notts County where he was playing so well under Martin Allen attracting all of the right attention and showing the fans what he can really do. Montano is one of the rising stars of today at the Boleyn and any experience he can get is valuable playing experience. Big Sam made the choice to bring him back and send him to play under Di Canio which in all fairness wasn’t such a bad idea given that Di Canio is an Irons legend and one of the most skilful players to have graced the Upton Park turf.
There have been serious problems with Montano and Di Canio. Having scored on his debut in the win against Accrington Stanley, everyone thought that he was on the way to another successful loan spell so what went wrong?
Di Canio made a statement saying how Montano did not train hard enough and he didn’t deserve a place on the team when he wasn’t playing to his full potential. However good things can come out of bad things, and many players who have had bad experiences have come out the other side double the professional they went in.
Hopefully this will show the young Colombian forward that everything isn’t perfect in the world of football and footballers cannot take a solid relationship with their manager for granted, but with any luck he will become a better player and hopefully a far better professional as he will have learnt from this negative experience and with time the young forward should brush it off and carry on with his so promising career.
Interesting blog but there are a few innacuracies.
Firstly, he played the first 3 games from the start and was a used sub in the 4th game. He was dropped for the Port Vale publicly by PDC but then put Montano on the bench, however he didn’t come on.
Following another blasting in the papers from PDC he dropped him for the JPT game and as he was inelibible for the FA Cp there was no point in him hanging around.
PDC behaved despicably poorly and Montano never responded like for like or got drawn into a public spat. What is clear is that this is rank bad management by PDC. As a manager who has a loan player from another club, one simply does not publicly attempt to destroy the boy’s character or question his commitment or attitde. It’s not even his player!! Even worse to do it when it is simply not true. PDC got peed off because Montano wouldn’t beg him to stay at Swindon for a longer period. Listen to this quote from the master to**er at work:
“If he comes to me after (tonight) and says that he is desperate to stay, that he wants to be a part of the team and that he wants to win the league, then I can think about looking to keep him because he has talent.
Tonight though I will select the players who will definitely be with me until January”.
Have yo ever heard such garbage…win the league…the boy is on a 1 month loan for Christsake!!
I think he will learn from this bt i think he is probably very happy to be back at West Ham now who incidentally are rightly hacked off with PDC over this….don’t be expecting Rob Hall to be heading down the M4 anythime soon!
Very true, I think it shows how much of a professional he really is. At only 19 years of age he responded way above his age, think he will be something amazing in the future.