Joao Felix has become football's Rorschach test – everyone sees something different

New York Times

09-02-2025

It is unclear, from his writings on the human mind, whether Hermann Rorschach was much of a football fan.
Compelled to guess, you'd have to assume not. The Swiss psychoanalyst had a pretty full-on academic career, spread across multiple institutions in three different countries, plus two kids and a leadership role at a psychiatric hospital. FC Zurich home matches were probably not high on his agenda.
Advertisement
Rorschach, who died in 1922, is best known for creating the inkblot test — an experiment in which patients are asked to interpret a series of abstract, symmetrical shapes. There are no right answers; ambiguity is king. The idea — not uncontroversial but still wildly popular over a century later — is that differing combinations of responses can be wrangled into conclusions about the psyches of those who sit the test.
All of which brings us, in a painfully roundabout way, to Joao Felix.
Joao Felix, in case you weren't paying attention, joined Milan on loan from Chelsea on deadline day. It is his fourth club in the last three seasons — Atletico Madrid and Barcelona being the two others. In that time he has signed for Chelsea on loan, done very little, signed for Chelsea again on a permanent deal, and now — yes — left Chelsea on loan. Sorry, what? Are these pieces supposed to fit together?
Joao Felix is the fourth most expensive player of all time but can't get a game anywhere. Every new beginning turns out to be a false start. A player who was compared to Johan Cruyff when he broke through in Portugal is beginning to look like one of those players who never quite escapes the waiting room of his own career. What exactly is going on here?
Here's a better question: what do you see when you look at Joao Felix? What do these formless smudges on the page mean?
At this stage, cynicism is probably the default position. People quote the headline numbers — €178million (£148.2m; $183.8m) in transfer fees, 37 league goals in five and a half seasons since leaving Benfica — and roll their eyes. 'An imposter,' Roy Keane called him in 2021, a label that seemed cruel at the time but is no longer such an outlier view.
The implication here is not that Joao Felix has wasted his talent. It is that it was never really there in the first place — that he was all hype, his breakneck rise an embodiment of all that is wrong with modern football. By zig-zagging between big clubs, surfing on the waves of decadence, he is ramming home the point.
Advertisement
There is a kernel of sense here. Hypercapitalism does strange, ugly things to sport. It eats its young. Atletico Madrid paying Benfica €126m for Joao Felix in 2019 was a clear market distortion. He had only played one full season of senior football, was still only beginning to understand what kind of footballer he might become. Ideally, he would have stayed in Portugal for at least another year, but the unflinching logic of money spoke loudest.
Could Joao Felix have refused to move? Could he instead have insisted upon joining Manchester City, a team whose playing style would have aligned far more closely with his game than Atletico's did? Maybe, maybe not. The selection of Jorge Mendes as his agent will certainly reduce sympathy for him in some circles.
Still, there is an undeniable air of melancholy to his movements since that move. At Atletico, his natural brio repeatedly slammed into the brick wall of Diego Simeone's personality. Now he is used mainly as a kind of deluxe bargaining chip, passed around between Europe's heavy rollers, lubricating a transfer for Conor Gallagher here, helping Chelsea reduce their wage bill there. Even if he does well at Milan, you wouldn't feel confident in predicting where he will be next season.
If you see Joao Felix as a fraud, you won't care much about this. Average footballer gets incredibly rich from moving around: pass me the tiny violin.
Here's the thing, though. Other people look at Joao Felix and see something else. They see charm, magic, possibility. They see a caged bird. I should know; I am one of them.
Joao Felix is a footballer for the aesthetes, the kind of player who makes your heart beat just that little bit quicker. He floats across the turf like a petal on the wind. He is two-footed, skilful, soulful. He tries things — nutmegs, through balls, flicks, little lobbed finishes that turn your guts to jelly. So much modern football is mechanical and unfeeling; Joao Felix is loose and breezy. He is a flagbearer for beauty.
Advertisement
Is he consistent? Not really, although he'd have a better shot at it if he played a bit more. Is he a hard runner, a demon presser, the kind of guy who will risk his life to make a tackle? No, no and no. He is no one's idea of a complete player. Does that matter? Should it?
Imagine Joao Felix in Italy in the 1990s. You can picture it, can't you? He's wearing the No 10 jersey and white boots. His socks are only vaguely acquainted with his shins. He's Rui Costa, Roberto Mancini, Francesco Totti. None of those players chased back. It was fine. You don't ask Caravaggio to sand your floors. Let the man paint.
(There is a lesson to be gleaned about the hypocrisy of modern fandom here; you can bet your bottom dollar that those who moan about lazy, self-indulgent playmakers loved themselves a bit of Roberto Baggio back in the day.)
If Joao Felix is trapped in the wrong era, he has also been a victim of circumstance.
He impressed on loan at Barcelona — his dream club, by his own admission — last year but their wonky finances made a permanent move impossible. At Chelsea, his path to the first team was blocked by Cole Palmer, an immovable object if ever there was one.
Mostly, there are the aftershocks of that Atletico transfer. The wages he received in Madrid instantly shifted him into the superstar category, two or three levels above clubs who might have offered him stability, leeway and love when it all turned sour.
Again, here, we are talking about eras and errors, gauzy dreams butting up against cold, hard reality. In the past, a Villarreal or an Udinese might have been able to sign Joao Felix. They might have built teams around him, turned him into a small-town deity. But the pyramid has steepened.
Joao Felix, in fairness, took a pay cut to join Chelsea in the summer. It is also to his credit that he has resisted the lure of Saudi Arabia. There have been no major warning signs off the pitch, either, no tales of dissolution. He does not yet appear ready to give up on the European dream just yet.
Advertisement
The early noises from Milan have been positive. He scored on debut against Roma in midweek — a lovely, dainty clip over Mile Svilar — and played 84 minutes against Empoli on Saturday night, most of them in his preferred position behind a No 9. 'He has so much quality,' Milan manager Sergio Conceicao said after the Roma game. 'We all expect great things from him.'
We have been here before. Hence the cynicism. Hence the disdain. But for the rest of us — for the Joao Felix lifers, the Joao Felix holdouts, the Joao Felix evangelicals — there remains a thin sliver of hope to grasp.
There are, for now, still different ways of looking at football's ultimate Rorschach test.
GO DEEPER
Joao Felix has hard work ahead of him to convince Chelsea fans