James Rodriguez is perilously close to attaining ‘persona non grata’ status at Real Madrid as things stands, with a complete collapse in the Colombian forward’s form coinciding with lurid tales of waning focus and excess.

Indeed, having made just eight starts for Real so far this season, James recently hit the headlines for the first time in months after his idiotic arrest for leading police on a 200 km/h car chase that ended in the car park at the club’s Valdebebas training complex.

Now, Ivan Mejia, a well regarded Colombian journalist, has gone public and catalogued the reasons for James’ dramatic plummet in which he scalded the player for losing his focus entirely since joining Real in an €80million deal after the 2014 World Cup.

According to the Daily Mirror, Mejia’s “explosive radio segment” sounded a little something like this:

[James is] in a a footballing decline, he’s not playing well. The Madrid board are worried because he’s not that same James that arrived after the World Cup. He’s racing his car, he’s going out at night. He’s making appearances in Qatar. He’s lost all sense of perspective and isn’t training well. That Benitez left him on the bench is completely understandable. He, Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo dedicated themselves to sabotaging Benitez. He follows Cristiano and wants to be part of his group. He’s lost his humility, lamentably. If he doesn’t come back down to earth then he’ll become a flash in the pan.

For what it’s worth, the Guardian’s resident Spanish football shamen Sid Lowe made the following observation after stumbling across a link to the article cited above…

@eaamalyon there’s a particular line in there that’s true (I believe). — Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) January 19, 2016

Must be the Benitez thing. When Rafa was leaving James out it was tantamount to sacrilege. Now Zinedine Zidane is doing likewise, it’s completely down to the player’s own lack of motivation.

What a mess.