He is getting paid a tremendous amount of money and is a professional so he should be giving 100% every second on the pitch. However, if he really is "not trying", then I get it. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand it. Here we have a young, potentially world-class striker who just missed a chance that 99.99% of people will never, ever experience, and that is be a star in the World Cup. With the way things ended up, I honestly believe they could have made the Final with him in the lineup.
If you were working a job where you were getting absolutely no help and asked to do everything on your own while getting little to no short-term benefit/reward, money aside would you be happy with your job? Would you continuously put in all your effort when when you previously did that you suffered a severe setback (injury) and missed your dream of a lifetime opportunity (WC) because of it? With the crap the club is serving up at the moment (both in the office and tactically on the pitch), would you risk potentially suffering another severe injury knowing that with the way the company is intent on doing things (the wayw e're set up on the pitch) that energy wasted would be all for naught, especially knowing you won't get fired either way? The talent is still there, we see it from time to time, but even if he worked his socks off we would still be awful because of our tactics. So is the risk really worth the reward? He's a beast, but he's not bionic. Again, I don't agree with this mindset but realistically you've got to put yourself in his shoes to understand. I believe that you should put 100% in, especially getting that salary, but I get it. It's not even that this is modern football; a career is short and he is wasting it here at the moment. He sees all his Belgium buddies improving and being successful, and unfortunately under Lambert and Lerner he will never, ever achieve anything here at club level. I hope for a takeover and a new manager that would re-invigorate his interest to be here as I want nothing more than for CB to stay at the club and become a legend, but in this current state of affairs it's really not in his best individual interest to stay here. So if you know you won't have success at a company why would you risk further setback and worst-case career? And no, he doesn't owe us anything. He kept us up in his first season and that alone was more than expected. He was already in the Belgium first XI before he flourished here, so I don't concur with the argument that we helped make him. Playing in that team he would have been noticed shortly after, if not already. Watch how he performs next month for the national team.
It may not even be that he lacks effort. Physical recovery is one thing, but mental recovery is another. For all we know his injury came while chasing down or making a run off the ball. Did we ever find that out?