da esport bet： Newcastle United are a club like any other, they've had their fill of success stories and endured their burden of talented starlets to have failed to kick on after such tantalising early promise.
da leao： Football is enthralling, awe-inspiring; a sojourn from the harsh realities of life and a chance for camaraderie, revelling in the highs and nursing the wounds of chastening defeats with those suffering the same inflictions.
For those actually playing the beautiful game, it's the opportunity for a spot in the limelight and a lucrative career that wide-eyed, far-dreaming kids all so dearly yearn for.
But it doesn't always work out. So many fall prey to the unrelenting pressures of an unrelenting business, and for those that do fall by the wayside – be that in their formative years or after graduating and initially bursting onto the major scene with a flourish – football can be a cruel mistress indeed.
Players like Mehdi Abeid and Sammy Ameobi both flattered to deceive after an exciting introduction to life on Tyneside, while Remy Cabella – older when signing at 24, mind – arrived at St. James' Park with such fanfare, only for the attacking midfielder to founder and scored just once from 31 matches before leaving with his tail between his legs.
Perhaps one of the most poignant failures of recent years is that of Rolando Aarons, who actually plied his formative years with Newcastle as a player of immense quality, and despite dazzling upon his breakthrough, has now plummeted into the murky abyss.
When did Newcastle sign Rolando Aarons?
Released from Bristol City as a 13-year-old youth, Aarons was faced with a future of the worst kind for an aspiring footballer, the kind that feels like a veritable quagmire, so much hard work amounting to nothing.
Newcastle provided the Jamaica-born winger with some incredible respite, offering him a place in their academy ranks with the view to nurturing him to the first team.
What excitement the fleet-footed prodigy held; across the 13/14 campaign, a teenage Aarons would score three goals and supply an assist from 13 matches in the Premier League 2, alerting erstwhile manager Alan Pardew to his talents.
It was then that Aarons' budding career started to build steam, with a date with prominence surely awaiting over the hill.
What was said about Rolando Aarons when he first joined Newcastle?
After dazzling in pre-season in 2014 and earning a place in Newcastle's senior Premier League squad at the maiden stage of the 2014/15 season, the ace, then aged 18, was touted as a precocious player capable of filling the void left by a disgruntled Hatem Ben Afra's departure on loan to Hull City.
And he announced himself to the stage with deadly, prodigious promise, scoring two goals and supplying an assist from just six outings across the 2014/15 campaign, including a goal and assist apiece in just his second match, a cameo in the English top-flight against Crystal Palace.
Sadly, what hinted at being a remarkable entrance to the big time was detrimentally disrupted by injury, with a hamstring problem sidelining the gem for almost the entirety of that year.
Indeed, those around him were waxing lyrical as a confident, electric and ferocious wide forward demonstrated skills requisite for success at the highest level, with sports performance expert Ray Wilson holding the then-teenager in high regard in 2015.
He said, “I believe he can go all the way. He’s got the right mentality. He’s not afraid of hard work. If you throw a hurdle at him he’s brave enough and strong enough he will attempt it. And if he can’t succeed today he’ll make all the small steps that he needs tomorrow."
The Daily Mail's Craig Hope even envisaged a future to match that of the burgeoning Raheem Sterling in 2014, who at the time plied his trade with Liverpool, with the reporter writing that 'Aarons boasts all of the same attributes as the Liverpool star and is strikingly similar in build and style.'
Sterling had just starred for Liverpool during the historic 2013/14 title-challenging season, with the deadly Anfield strikeforce ultimately failing to stop Manchester City from claiming the Premier League title.
A young Sterling claimed nine goals and seven assists during his breakout year and looked a talent set for the top, soon earning a £49m transfer to the Citizens – and the rest, as they say, is history.
Where is Rolando Aarons now?
A career tainted by injurious injustice; a possible England star stained by his hapless luck in the medical room. Aarons would only play 27 times for the Magpies, scoring four goals and providing three assists, before finally leaving the club with more than a little pathos.
A range of loan spells – including stints with Scottish side Motherwell, Sheffield Wednesday and Serie A outfit Hellas Verona – all bore rotten fruits.
In fact, having scored four times for Newcastle, Aarons has actually found the net just four more times across the rest of his career so far.
Now 27 years old, the two-cap Jamaica international is without a club after an inauspicious, two-year spell with Huddersfield Town, where he played just 12 times and failed to register a single direct goal contribution.
Injuries have ravaged his chances of sustaining minutes with any meaningful regularity, and Aarons will now just be hoping to find a club to rekindle his career as soon as possible.
A sobering story that epitomises the strife that many players must endure after being lionised in the embryonic period of a hard, gruelling fight to cement a starting berth at a first-rate football club, Aarons will forever rue the woes on the injury front that hindered his career from really taking off.
For a player who could have emulated his homeland peer in Sterling, it's a case of what could have been. But injuries aside, supporters will hold Aarons in an endearing light, having captivated so many when waltzing onto the pitch with such swagger all those years ago.