IT has been three weeks since FSG unveiled Brendan Rodgers as the new manager of Liverpool Football Club.
The Northern Irishman impressed at his initial press conference settling the nerves of many who, perhaps, needed to be convinced of his suitability for the top job at one of the world’s most well-known and historically successful footballing institutions.
With Rodgers now famous for his philosophy on the game and his ability to employ the tiki-taka brand of football to great effect at Swansea City, naturally, many Reds are intrigued to see how quickly Rodgers will be able to implement his style at Anfield and excited about the potential success it may bring.
As with any manager, transfers are a key criterion by which Rodgers will be judged. Managers can live or die by their signings, how they fit in, are the value for money, can they do the job they were brought in to do? While no manager ever has a one hundred per cent success rate in the transfer market, there are always some flops, it is estimated that if he manages to get half of them correct then he’s not doing too bad of a job. After Liverpool’s perceived failures in the transfer window last summer, it is imperative that the new man gets his first few correct.
Of course, with the summer sales now on, Liverpool, as with every other big club, have been linked with plenty of players, some likely, some not so likely, and this will continue until the window slams shut at the end of August. One player that has been the subject of growing media speculation surrounding an imminent switch to Anfield is, Italian international, Fabio Borini, but who is he and where will he fit in?
As I’ve said, Borini is a full Italian international and, despite having only one cap at senior level, is part of Cesare Prandelli’s Euro 2012 squad currently in Poland and Ukraine. Borini began his playing days at the age of just nine, joining Bologna as a youth player in 2001, the club that he and his father passionately supported. Six years later, the young Fabio made the move to West London where he joined Chelsea.
As a youth team player at Chelsea, Borini was mentored by Liverpool’s current boss Brendan Rodgers in his capacity of youth team coach, a man who the player has likened to “an uncle”. The following season 2008/09, as first choice striker for the Chelsea reserves, Borini scored ten goals in eleven games. 2009 saw the young Italian named in Carlo Ancelotti’s Champions’ League squad and he made his debut in the competition in the team’s 2-2 draw with Apoel. Borini went on to play three times for the senior side over the next season and a half before moving to Swansea City on loan.
At Swansea, Borini was once again re-united with Brendan Rodgers. The young striker went on to play an integral role in the Swans’ Championship promotion push that season, scoring six goals in nine league games and winning the decisive penalty which ensured victory in the play-off final. Following his loan spell at the Liberty, Borini set sail for his homeland where he joined Parma, after having already signed a pre-contract agreement.
This is where the story gets a little complicated. One month after signing for Parma, Borini signed for Roma on an initial one year loan, costing roughly £1 million. However the Roman club was given the option to sign him permanently, on a four year deal, at the end of the first season for around £5.5 million and subsequently entered into a co-ownership deal with Parma, costing the club from the capital roughly £1.8 million. The deadline for Roma to take up the buy-out option has now passed and it is heavily expected that, with the Italian club failing to activate it, Liverpool will launch a bid somewhere in the region of £8-10 million in an attempt to bring Borini to Anfield.
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Whilst in the Eternal City, the striker, who is still only 21, scored ten goals in twenty six appearances, including nine in Serie A, a feat which has propelled him from the under-21s to the full national team as an unexpected inclusion in Prandelli’s tournament squad. Having scored goals for his country at every level so far, seven in twenty nine at the various junior levels, it is surely just a matter of time before the protégé from Bentivoglio hits the target for the senior team.
Borini is young, as we know, but he has fantastic positional awareness for his age. With excellent reading of the game and the acceleration to get away from defenders, similarities can be drawn with Luis Suarez, another Anfield hero. Primarily a centre forward, Borini can also operate on the right or left of a front three and has operated across the front line at Roma, scoring goals from all three positions. Liverpool are in need up-front and out wide, especially with Rodgers known to favour a three pronged attack and it seems to me that Borini could be the perfect fit for the club at this juncture.
Having operated under Rodgers for sizeable slices of his career already, Borini is well known to the Liverpool manager and, if Rodgers has earmarked him for an Anfield berth, it will only be because he is certain that the young forward will add something extra to the squad and be a hit in the Premier League. As Rodgers attempts to evolve Liverpool’s style of play it will be key for him to bring in a couple of players who are already well versed in it to help with the transition and Borini fits the bill. Having been at Chelsea as a youth and then at Swansea, Borini has knowledge of the English game already and language and cultural issues will not be a problem, as they often can be when signing Italian players.
All in all, I would be totally behind a move to bring Fabio Borini to Liverpool Football Club. We know that Rodgers has a certain style, we know that he is meticulous in his research and suitably scientific in his methods and we also know that he has an eye to identify and target players who can add to his teams, Gylfi Sigurdsson at Swansea being a case in point (another man who, incidentally, is likely to be confirmed as a Liverpool player in the near future.) At 21 Borini is a very exciting prospect indeed and an outlay of £10 million for one of Italian football’s hottest properties seems to represent relatively little risk. If all goes well and Roma don’t decide to snap him up at the last minute, I hope and expect that Rodgers will succeed in his efforts to land his man. If he does, we may well be seeing Borini’s trademark “hand in mouth” celebration quite a lot over the coming years. Let’s hope so anyway.
You can catch up with Neil on Twitter @Neil1980 or on his blog http://itsallinthegameblog.wordpress.com/
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Unfortunately, we may now never know – Roma have now sealed the capture of Borini outright, after buying the remaining 50 per cent of the player from Parma.
He’s now bought fully by ROMA so we won’t know this year and we probably never know
we shall be behind Rodgers, do not care who he signs as long as they get us back to the glory days, en that long awaited premier league trophy
Plz do all you can to get Joe Allen to LFC. He is my 1st choice.
Roma have bought the rights, that is so, however that does not rule out a Liverpool switch should the club come in with the right offer. Co-ownership was the problem, once one club owns the player outright then bids can be made. I wouldn’t rule out Borini just yet.
Does anyone really know much about this player!?