Bukayo Saka: Triumphs and Trials in the Last Year
Bukayo Saka has already lived a lifetime’s worth of highs and lows in the last year alone.
He helped drag Arsenal back to the summit of English football, the Premier League trophy finally returning to north London after 22 long years. The scenes at the Emirates were wild, cathartic, the kind that etch themselves into a club’s history. Saka was at the heart of it all.
Then came the Champions League final. Paris. Paris Saint-Germain. The biggest stage, the brightest lights – and the cold cruelty of a penalty shootout that went the other way. From glory to heartbreak in a matter of weeks. That is the terrain Saka now walks as a fully-fledged star.
A body that won’t quite cooperate
His value to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal is beyond dispute when he’s fully fit. That caveat is becoming louder.
Physical issues have stalked him for months. The latest concern is a long-standing Achilles problem that refuses to clear, an unwelcome companion as he crosses the Atlantic to chase a World Cup with England.
When the Three Lions opened their campaign against Croatia, Saka’s role was reduced to that of observer at kick-off. He took his place on the bench while his club team-mate Noni Madueke got the nod on the right flank. For a player so central to Arsenal’s rise, it was a stark reminder that international football can be ruthless when fitness wavers.
The pattern has continued into this week. As England prepare for Ghana on Tuesday, Saka has not yet been able to take a full part in group training. The rest of the squad worked on the grass; he stayed inside, following an individual programme and testing that troublesome Achilles.
Barnes: “It’s his fitness”
John Barnes knows what it means to carry expectation on the wing for England. He also knows that talent means little if the body can’t match the mind’s ambition.
Speaking to GOAL in association with viagogo’s “World Cuts” campaign, the former Liverpool and England wide man cut through the noise around Saka’s place in the pecking order.
“It's his fitness. I mean, his form has been great for Arsenal, but it's his fitness,” Barnes said.
“Madueke is fit, so therefore he may be ahead of him at that particular moment in time. So, obviously, Thomas Tuchel will know how fit he is, how much he can influence games. We know the quality he actually has, so I think it's really just down to his fitness.
“And I don't know how fit he is, how many games he's had, whether Madueke is ahead of him. From a form perspective or a quality perspective, we can see what he can do. So I think his fitness is the biggest issue as to whether he starts for England or not.”
The numbers back up the sense of a stop-start year. Injuries limited Saka to 11 goals last season, only seven of them in the Premier League. For a player of his attacking influence, those figures prompt obvious questions.
Barnes isn’t particularly interested in them.
Goals secondary to winning
Asked whether Saka needs to sharpen his goal output, Barnes pushed back at the obsession with individual stats.
“His goal output doesn't have to be great if they win the league. And if England wins the World Cup, he doesn't score one goal, it's not important. What's important is him being part of a team that can win,” he said.
“Once again, I don't think Thomas Tuchel is looking at individual numbers because if he scores more and Marcus Rashford scores more, you know what that means? Harry Kane will score less.
“So it's about the way you play to create for other people to score. I don't think he'll worry about his goal-scoring form, because it's not about the individual and what he does. If he can be part of a team and help that team to win, then I'm sure his lack of goals isn't going to be an issue.
“It's to do with how the team performs, to create chances for maybe Jude Bellingham and for Harry Kane to score, for them to work hard as a team, to be creative, and yes, they may score the odd goal. So he's looking at the way the team plays, rather than how any individual performs, Thomas Tuchel, which is the right thing to do.”
It is a timely reminder. Saka’s game has never been just about the finish. It’s the angles he finds, the double teams he attracts, the way he tilts a defence and opens space for others. In a side stacked with finishers, his creativity and intelligence may matter more than the number next to his name.
Tuchel plays the long game
Tuchel, now the man charged with turning England’s talent into a trophy, has already signalled that he will not gamble recklessly with Saka’s fitness.
The Arsenal forward came off the bench against Croatia and immediately looked like himself, playing a major part in the move that ended with Marcus Rashford putting the final gloss on a 4-2 win. It was a short cameo, but a sharp one.
“Bukayo is ready and will get more and more ready. I think once we go to the last game of this group he will be ready,” Tuchel said afterwards.
That last group game comes against Panama on Saturday. Whether Saka is “ready” by then in Tuchel’s eyes remains the key question.
For now, the evidence is mixed. He was the only England player not involved in the latest group session, again working indoors while his team-mates tuned up for Ghana. England hope for a long stay in North America, and Tuchel has vowed to handle him with care. No shortcuts. No unnecessary risks.
So the picture is clear and complicated all at once: a player central to his club’s renaissance, a winger whose quality is not in doubt, but whose Achilles currently dictates how much of this World Cup he can truly own.
If England are still standing when the stakes rise and the margins shrink, will Saka’s body finally let his talent take over – or will this tournament be another chapter in a season of what-ifs?
