Redknapp’s Brutal Verdict: The ‘Worst Professional’ He Ever Managed — The Adel Taarabt Paradox

If you’ve been around English football as long as Harry Redknapp, you’ve seen every type of player stroll through the dressing room door. And when the old gaffer names the worst professional he ever worked with, you don’t half sit up. Step forward Adel Taarabt — a ‘streets won’t forget’ talent whose touch could make you gasp and whose application could make you groan.

The row that rocked Loftus Road

Cast your mind back to 2014. Redknapp, then in charge at QPR, let fly after a 3–2 defeat to Liverpool, tearing into Taarabt’s fitness and attitude. He claimed the winger’s recent weight drop was down to a bout of tonsillitis rather than hard yards, and said he couldn’t keep shielding a player he felt was roughly three stone over where he needed to be. Taarabt had scarcely seen the pitch — about half an hour of Premier League action all season — and he fired back, accusing Redknapp of lacking a proper gameplan. Classic football soap opera.

Late nights, early kick-offs and a training ground stand-off

Redknapp didn’t stop there. He recounted being told Taarabt had been at a casino into the small hours ahead of a lunchtime clash with Manchester United, and said that when he quizzed the player, the timeline got fuzzy — Friday or maybe Thursday, depending on who you believed. He also recalled a pre-season camp at Exeter when, in his absence, Steve McClaren sent Taarabt home for failing to hit the training standards. Fitness coaches, Redknapp said, were unanimous: the Moroccan wasn’t doing the work.

The maddening magic of Adel

Here’s the kicker: when Taarabt was on song, he was outrageous. Spurs fans saw glimpses, but QPR got the full carnival after making his move permanent in 2010 following two loans. At Loftus Road he rattled in 34 goals and laid on 41 assists, lighting up drab afternoons with the sort of sorcery that sells season tickets. A 16-game loan at Fulham didn’t quite spark, but AC Milan still fancied a look and took him in January 2014. After that came Benfica, Genoa and Al-Nasr, and today — at 36 — he’s strutting his stuff for Sharjah FC in the UAE Pro League, where he chipped in nine goals and six assists across 41 outings last term.

There’s always been a sense of what-if. At one point, Taarabt even suggested he might have been better off joining Arsenal rather than carving out cult-hero status at Spurs. That’s the Taarabt story in a nutshell: part wizard, part what-might-have-been.

Redknapp: still box office

Redknapp, for his part, remains a voice people listen to. He hasn’t managed since a short stint at Birmingham City in 2017, but he’s hardly vanished. He was back on British screens with a second crack at I’m a Celebrity… this time in South Africa, making the latter stages before missing out to Adam Thomas in the final. The man’s done nearly everything in football and telly — and he still knows how to light up a debate with one blunt sentence.

It all leaves us with a tidy little truth about the game we love: raw talent will get you through the door, but professionalism keeps you in the room. Taarabt had the first in spades; Redknapp never believed he nailed the second. And that’s why the Moroccan remains one of the Premier League’s most thrilling contradictions.

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