The footballing life of Alberto Aquilani is all a bit of a drama really, yesterday we heard news that Juventus with whom the Liverpool player is on loan had decided they weren’t going to make the move permanent, believing the £14million price tag to be too high.
It was believed that this was opening the door for AC Milan to move for the player as they saw him as a replacement for Andrea Pirlo who has been repeatedly linked with moves to Chelsea.
Andrea Pirlo’s contract is perhaps worth a little in excess of £4million a year and whilst Manchester City’s name has been inevitably thrown into the mixer, its Chelsea that would be a far more natural home for the player who will be ‘on a free’ come the summer.
Today however the story takes a new twist with Italian newspaper Leggo claiming that they in fact wont send the player back to Liverpool they will instead attempt to renegotiate a price for the Italian international.
Aquilani signed a 5 year contract with Liverpool in August 2009, and he cost the Anfield club £17million, it was initially thought that he was signed to replace the departing Xabi Alonso who was moving to Real Madrid, it became apparent however over the course of the season that the Italian preferred a role higher up the pitch. The Italian international had an extremely frustrating time at Liverpool, he didn’t appear in a league game until November and that was as a substitute.
Games did not become any more frequent until close to the end of the season when the player did manage to find a string of appearances in the first team he began to demonstrate his ability and showed what he could offer the team.
It was not enough however for him to remain at Liverpool this season and Roy Hodgson moved him to Juventus relatively early in his Liverpool reign. Now that the end of the loan period is approaching it seems unlikely that new manager Kenny Dalglish will want to bring Aquilani back to the club.
The signing of Raul Meireles has made the Italian midfielder somewhat surplus to requirements, and with Gerrard still at the club it is a more defensively minded midfield option that the club could do with. Lucas has improved but the Merseyside team have never really replaced Javier Mascherano and I am not sure there would be a place for Aquilani in the Liverpool midfield on a regular basis.
As far as Liverpool are concerned they will just want to bring in as much money as they can for the injury prone midfielder, and they will not really want to have the player back should talks with Juventus break down. It may be sensible for them to sound out AC Milan and other clubs to see how much they could get for the player before renogiating a price with Juve.
In my mind the only certainty here is that Alberto Aquilani won’t be spending another season in the Premier League and he will be a Serie A man again next term, at which club though remains to be seen.
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