The greyhound that caught the rabbit - Inside Callum Hudson-Odoi's disastrous loan spell at Bayer Leverkusen

Once considered one of Europe's brightest young talents, Callum Hudson-Odoi went from Bayern Munich transfer target to an unusued sub at Bayer Leverkusen.

Xabi Alonso had a tough decision to make. Following a gruelling Europa League knock-out game against Monaco, which had seen the Bundesliga side match their French counterparts for 120 minutes and only just squeeze through on penalties, the Spaniard was now tasked with picking a team that could match high-flying Freiburg just three days later in the Bundesliga.

What made matters worse was the fact that young star Florian Wirtz had played 115 minutes despite only just recovering from a career-threatening injury, Moussa Diaby was nursing a muscle injury and Amine Adli was missing through a red card suspension. In the end, the young coach went with a front three of the half-fit Diaby on the right, the inconsistent Adam Hlozek on the left and the relatively untested Sardar Azmoun up front.

The match finished in a rather drab 1-1 draw. But what was perhaps most intriguing about the game was what hadn’t happened. Despite being short on options and reluctant to overplay his young stars, Alonso had never once considered a perfectly viable option on the bench. Indeed, throughout both games Callum Hudson-Odoi took in all 210 minutes of top-flight football from the relative comfort of the Leverkusen bench. Where he has spent most of the season, like some forgotten phantom of yesteryear.

Indeed, the quick and steady demise of Hudson-Odoi before all of German football was an interesting sub-plot to the 2022/23 season. While Bayern Munich imploded and Borussia Dortmund did all they could to follow suit, here sat a former wonderkid of the Premier League with his feet up, doing very little at all at Leverkusen. And when we dig a little deeper into what happened over the course of his doomed loan spell at the Bay Arena, we get a much better sense of why Hudson-Odoi hasn’t quite developed into the player he was once tipped to be.