Very Specific Football Question No.35: What if Cesc Fabregas forgets how to play football again?

The sight of Cesc Fabregas spraying passes around a sun-drenched Dean Court in Chelsea’s 4-1 win at Bournemouth last weekend was nothing less than majestic.

It was the kind of day when Fabregas seemed to be operating on a higher plane to his team-mates and opponents. He resembled a God among men; a man among boys; a 103-times capped Spain international among Andrew Surman and Lewis Grabban. With assists for Chelsea’s first three goals and a performance oozing poise and grace, Fabregas was the best player on the pitch by a country mile.

It was a remarkable turnaround from his last experience of playing against Bournemouth. When Chelsea suffered a shock home defeat to the Cherries earlier this season, something terrible and terrifying happened to Fabregas.

As he explained in reference to the initial, less majestic match, “After Bournemouth, I was in bed and I spoke to my wife. I forgot how to play football.”

It is touching to imagine this horizontal conversation between Fabregas and his betrothed, and not just because one generally expects footballers to use beds for having sex with random girls they meet in nightclubs rather than to have genuine chats with the person they actually married.

It was also brave of Cesc to make this confession to his wife, given that his ability to play football was probably one of reasons she was attracted to him in the first place.

But it was even more courageous of him to publically shed light on his serious and debilitating condition. For a footballer, there is nothing more damaging than forgetting how to play football.

Anyone who wonders what it looks like when a player forgets to play football need only revisit some of Fabregas’ displays from earlier in the season. Be assured, it was an ugly spectacle.

“I have the ball and I don’t know what to do with it,” was how described Fabregas it.

In the same way that us mere mortals can slot our bank card into a cash machine and then suddenly realise with horror we no longer know the PIN number we had since we were 17, Fabregas has exposed the fact that elite sportsmen too can be robbed of basic human functions without warning or explanation.

The Spaniard’s recent displays indicate that he has remembered how to play football. In one sense, he is one of the lucky ones.

Now that Fabregas has brought the phenomenon of football amnesia into the public consciousness, it explains the career trajectories of several former stars.

David Bentley, Lee Hendrie, Seth Johnson, Roberto Soldado, Wayne Rooney. Men who forgot how to play football and never recovered.

While it’s admirable that Fabregas has highlighted this issue, as a self-professed sufferer of football amnesia it does also make him vulnerable.

New manager Antonio Conte will arrive at Chelsea in the summer, and he may be concerned that a player who forgot how to play football once might forget how to play football again.

Fabregas may be able to turn on the style against Bournemouth in a meaningless end-of-season game, but how can Conte be sure he won’t have another memory lapse when the pressure ramps up again next season?

At any moment Fabregas could have another meltdown. Just one misplaced pass against Norwich could trigger a relapse and send him wandering aimlessly around the pitch and shouting at people for weeks on end, just because he’s scared and he doesn’t know what to do. The man is a walking timebomb.

Fabregas might be Chelsea’s most talented midfielder. But when Conte looks at his squad this summer he may reach the conclusion that, for all his faults, at least John Obi Mikel has never forgotten how to play football.

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