Back from the brink: football's risen stars
The careers of these six footballers were on life support, before they found redemption in the most spectacular way in 2016.
A fleeting career makes it tough for a footballer to bounce back from a slump, but when they do it's something to be savoured.
We all love a good redemption story and 2016 has already served up a swag of them.
Yaya Toure
The 33 year-old’s $400,000 per-week salary makes him one of the Premier League's top earners, but a dip in form at the back end of last season, coupled with a spat between his agent and manager Pep Guardiola dating back to their Barcelona days, saw Toure cast out in the cold.
After the Ivorian apologised on his agent's behalf, he got his shot a redemption and took it with both hands, scoring both goals in his side’s 2-1 win over Crystal Palace – his first Premier League game of the season.
It seems Toure's exile has done him the world of good, shedding a few kilos and rediscovering the fire that made him one the of best midfielders in Europe.
Radamel Falcao
Hands up if you thought Falcao was finished? In 2013, the Hirsuite Colombian was at the top of world football and his 52 goals for Atletico Madrid in 68 league games earned him a reported $87 million move to Monaco.
That big-money switch soon became a nightmare after a serious knee injury in 2014 ruled him out of that year's World Cup. Since then, El Tigre has been a shadow of his former self and two dreadful loan spells at Manchester United and Chelsea had many thinking it may be the end.
But the Colombian has found his second wind on his return to France, as joint-top goalscorer at second-placed Monaco this season.
Mario Balotelli
Lost beneath the litany of controversial events that have coloured Balotelli's off-field career over the years is the prodigious talent that had him earmarked as a future star when he burst onto the scene with Internazionale as a 19 year-old.
Disastrous playing stints at Liverpool and AC Milan, coupled with inconsistency at national level led to an inauspicious trade to Nice.
For some it was last chance saloon for a talent too often bogged down in the cult of his own personality. For many others, Balotelli was already gone - consigned to collect a few last payslips before tumbling out football's swinging back door.
Balotelli seemed to know it, knuckling down and, clad in a vertical black and red strip, getting about the business of scoring goals. He's done that six times in six matches as his un-fancied team has ascended Ligue 1 in astonishing fashion this season.
Diego Costa
A fan poll by the Sun famously labelled Diego Costa as the ‘dirtiest player in the Premier League’ but 'beast mode' deserted the Spaniard in a difficult second season in England's top flight. After storming the Premier League with 20 goals in his title-winning debut season, Costa was unrecognisable in his sophomore campaign, looking lethargic, disinterested, possibly injured, and a shadow of the menacing figure who's goals fired Chelsea to the top previously.
He was singled out as the lightening rod for Jose Mourinho's bitter falling out with the club.
It all feels like distant memory now, with Costa back to his snarling, marauding best under the intense gaze of the equally intimidating Antonio Conte. Costa is back setting the example, with 10 goals in his first 12 league games this season.
Alex Brosque
Brosque sat out the majority of last season after a horror injury run and the Sydney FC showed just how much he was missed, as it notoriously struggled to find the back of the net in his absence.
You would be given for thinking the 33 year-old’s best days were behind him, but the Sky Blues captain appears reinvigorated after a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
Bearded Brosque is the club’s joint top goal-scoer this season and with the club topping the A-League, Brosque has been earmarked for a return to the Socceroos fold.
Juan Mata
Juan Mata has a greater combined goals and assists tally (83) than any Premier League midfielder in the last five years. It's stats like that that make his rumoured falling out with Jose Mourinho all the more baffling.
But so it goes, Mourinho wasn't a fan of Mata's work-rate when the pair were at Chelsea and sanctioned the play-maker's eventual sale to Manchester United.
Not two years later, fate would bring the frosty pair together when Mourinho found himself making the move from Chelsea to United, where Mata was viewed as one of the only players capable of orchestrating an attack. Awkward.
Fans were quick to pen the Spanish midfielder's football obituary, but Mata has cemented himself as United's chief play-maker and creative fulcrum, patching up his patchy relationship with Mourinho in the process.