Ranking the 10 best players who stayed loyal after relegation: Bowen, Del Piero… | OneFootball

Jarrod Bowen has confirmed he’s staying at West Ham – and avoided the wrath of his father-in-law Danny Dyer in the process.

Bowen’s future became one of the big topics for West Ham after their relegation to the Championship, but they now know they can prepare for the 2026-27 season with their captain on board.

We’ve ranked the 10 best players to stay loyal to a relegated club.

10. Xabi Prieto

Prieto spent his career as a one-club man with Real Sociedad, even sacrificing three years of top-flight football to do so.

The Spanish midfielder was 23 years old when La Real suffered relegation from La Liga in 2007. By that point, he’d played in more than 100 La Liga matches.

It took La Real three seasons to gain promotion back to La Liga. Prieto’s first game back in the top flight fell on his 27th birthday.

From there on out, he completed another eight seasons in La Liga, scoring 38 league goals. He also ended up playing in the Champions League and Europa League.

Despite his talent, Prieto was never capped at senior level by Spain. Perhaps that could have been different if he’d always played in the top flight, but he valued his loyalty to his local club more.

9. Andres Guardado

Deportivo were one of Spain’s powerhouses in the early 2000s, but they began sliding towards the trap door.

Guardado joined the club in 2007 and their fans voted him their player of the season at the first time of asking.

But by the end of the 2010-11 season, in which he only managed to make 20 appearances, their 20-year top-flight stay came to an end.

Guardado was 24 at the time and already had more than 50 international caps to his name for Mexico. However, he stuck around for one more season in A Coruna.

It turned out to be the highest-scoring of his career, and the one with the most assists too. Deportivo went up as champions, but Guardado moved on to Valencia for a taste of Champions League football.

8. Jack Grealish

Five years before he became the most expensive Englishman in history, Grealish stayed loyal to Aston Villa after their drop to the Championship.

The attacking midfielder was only a couple of years into his career at the time, admittedly, but it was commendable for him to stick around – especially when Villa remained stuck in the second tier for three years.

He was named in the PFA Team of the Year for the Championship when helping them to promotion in 2018-19, before taking the step back up to the Premier League in his stride and enjoying his best goalscoring season yet.

It was an emotional decision for Grealish to eventually leave Villa, but the opportunity of becoming Manchester City’s new number 10 in 2021 – as a £100m player – was too good to turn down.

7. Jarrod Bowen

Confirming his decision to stay at West Ham, Bowen stated: “I’ve been here six and a half years and transitioned from a boy, really, from the Championship into a man…” – in the Championship.

Sorry, Jarrod. We actually fully respect your decision to stay with West Ham after relegation, especially at this stage of your career.

Bowen could easily have attracted some top-flight clubs after scoring 65 Premier League goals for the Hammers. At the age of 29, many wouldn’t have blamed him for taking an opportunity to stay at the top level while he could.

But the attacker has remained committed to West Ham with the ambition of guiding them back to the Premier League. And with more than 50 Championship goals to his name from his Hull City days, he should be a big asset back at that level.

6. Glenn Hoddle

It could have been Spurs and not West Ham going down to the Championship this year after their close brush with relegation.

Rewind to 1977 and Tottenham did go down, at the end of Hoddle’s first full season in the first team.

The gifted midfielder, who was 19 at the time, decided to spend the season in the Second Division with Spurs. His 12 goals from 41 games helped them back up.

Hoddle enjoyed another nine years in the top flight with Spurs after that, earning his England debut in 1979 before winning two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup in the early 1980s.

5. Pavel Nedved

Ballon d’Or in 2003, Serie B in 2006.

Juventus’ demotion in the wake of Italy’s Calciopoli scandal wasn’t Nedved’s fault, nor any of his teammates. But after it was ruled that Juventus should be stripped of their title and sent to the second tier, a few understandably jumped ship.

Nedved, who was about to turn 34, stayed put. He went on to score 11 goals from 33 games in Serie B to help Juventus to an immediate promotion, before spending the last two years of his career back in Serie A.

4. Gabriel Batistuta

Batistuta was the second top scorer in Serie A over its 1990s heyday, despite spending a year in Serie B with Fiorentina.

The Argentine’s 16 league goals in his second season weren’t enough to prevent Fiorentina from going down in 1993, but the then-24-year-old remained loyal.

He helped La Viola win promotion at the first time of asking before winning the Serie A Golden Boot in his first season back in the top flight with 26 goals.

In fact, Batistuta scored more than 20 league goals in four of the six seasons he spent in Serie A with Fiorentina after their promotion (as well as in his first subsequently with Roma), highlighting just what a force they’d managed to keep in Serie B.

3. Franco Baresi

One of the very best centre-backs of all time, Baresi spent his whole, 20-year career with AC Milan.

A match-fixing scandal in 1980 led to Milan being demoted to Serie B for the only time in their history.

Since Baresi was only 20 at the time, it wasn’t the end of the world for his development. Milan gained promotion back to Serie A instantly, but their top-flight return was short lived.

In 1982, Milan went down again, this time simply because of their points tally. Baresi once again stuck with them, and a few months later earned his first senior Italy cap as a Serie B player.

Promotion followed and thus Milan’s days as an unlikely yo-yo club were over. Baresi spent 14 more seasons in Serie A with the Rossoneri, becoming a legend for club and country.

2. Alessandro Del Piero

We finish with two superstars from the Juventus team sent down to Serie B in 2006.

In at #2 is Del Piero, their captain and number 10 who’d hit double figures of goals in all competitions in each of the past five seasons and was a World Cup winner with Italy that summer.

Aged 31 at the time, Del Piero still had more to give at the top level. Indeed, after scoring 20 goals in Serie B to help Juventus back up, he went one better and scored 21 in their first season back in Serie A.

The attacker ultimately remained with Juve until 2012, when he headed off to Australia to play for Sydney FC.

1. Gianluigi Buffon

Just beating Del Piero to the top spot is his old teammate for club and country, Buffon.

Juve had paid a world-record fee for a goalkeeper to sign Buffon from Parma in 2001 and he was Italy’s number one for their World Cup win in 2006.

Buffon was 28 at the time and it wouldn’t have been overly surprising if he followed the likes of Fabio Cannavaro and Zlatan Ibrahimovic away from Juve.

But he pledged his future to Juve and even got named in the 2007 FIFPro World XI.

After their return to Serie A, Buffon stayed with Juve for more than a decade, before having a season with PSG and then returning to the Turin-based club.

He dropped down to Serie B by choice in 2021 to finish his career back where it all started with Parma.