A year ago Luca Brecel was on top of the snooker world, having defeated Mark Selby to become world champion. The Belgian had never won a match at the Crucible before his historic run in Sheffield, but has failed to match those heights since and now is set to drop to world No. 58 in the World Snooker Tour (WST) rankings.

The 29-year-old is the only player from mainland Europe to ever win the World Championship, but he is yet to even play a single main draw match across the opening three ranking events of the 2024 season.

He has dropped to sixth in the current WST rankings but is set to tumble down much further, as he sits 58th in the provisional end-of-season list, just 15 months on from lifting the World Championship trophy.

Brecel did not pick up any rankings points at the Champions League or the Xi’an Grand Prix and even forfeited a qualifier for the Chinese competition after failing to turn up to the venue.

The Belgian Bullet has not directly commented on why he wasn’t in attendance for his match but his father later explained that Brecel had been stuck in traffic on his way from Belgium to Leicester.

As a result, Hammad Miah was awarded a 5-0 walkover and the chance to compete in China for a winning prize of £177,000, which went to Kyren Wilson who has begun his year as champion with a bang.

Wilson has discussed his own problems that come with winning the World Championship, but took a wildly different approach to Brecel who celebrated Crucible glory by travelling around the world and spending a fortune on cars.

He bought a Ferrari, Porsche and Range Rover following the £250,000 victory over Selby and revealed that his status as a millionaire had to be revoked due to the splurge.

“I bought two more cars this week, so I went from a millionaire to a non-millionaire,” Brecel revealed last year. “It was a conscious decision to buy the cars and maybe feel that bit of pressure again, to recreate the feeling I had of just starting my career.

“I didn’t go lazy, but I just didn’t feel that hunger or motivation going from tournament to tournament. I don’t like that feeling and I had to change something. I wasn’t feeling any pressure any more. I was just playing and if I lost I was happy to be home. It’s not a good mindset to have.”

The pressure is certainly back on Brecel, as he risks the chance of dropping out of the top 50 altogether and the perks that come with a high ranking such as qualification for major events and preferential seeding.