da dobrowin： Roberto Firmino’s success at Liverpool is solid proof of the success of the German Bundesliga.
da luck： The Brazilian forward has been a sensation at Liverpool during the first few months of 2016 after being held back by injury and his side’s poor form during the opening exchanges of the season.
Firmino has, arguably, been the best Premier League player in 2016. His performances for Liverpool have helped his side make it to a cup final and produce some impressive results in the league, despite the inconsistencies of his team-mates. The former Hoffenheim man’s performance at the Etihad last year is one of the best individual displays of this campaign.
There we have the first point on how his arrival proves the great success of the Bundesliga. Hoffenheim are not a big club, they are not a club you would expect to be providing one of Liverpool’s best players.
Liverpool are one of the biggest clubs in Europe and a German side, who finished eighth in Germany’s top flight last season, have served them a star. Firmino was involved in 18 goals in the league last season and now, on current form, he’s one of the Premier League’s best talents.
To put that in to context, that’s similar to taking a player from Stoke City and plonking him straight into the first XI of Atletico Madrid. What would that say about the strength of the Premier League? We would be ecstatic, the papers would be stuffed with Premier League hyperbole, and fans would be chanting about the best league in the world.
Unfortunately, the PL fell from its place as the greatest league quite some time ago and we hold onto scraps of ‘most exciting’ or ‘unpredictable’ to justify our love for this money-fuelled footballing monster.
Firmino has shown he can play in a number of roles under Jurgen Klopp, performing centrally, from out wide and as a ‘false nine’.The Brazilian attacking midfielder is currently ahead of Philippe Coutinho, Juan Mata, Raheem Sterling and Ross Barkley on chances created, key passes and goals scored per 90-minutes. These four players, a year or two ago, were the shining lights of the Premier League, and a Brazilian from an upper mid-table German club is putting them all to shame. In fact, on these same metrics, Firmino is also comfortably ahead of Andres Iniesta, Isco and Marco Reus in their respective league performances (admittedly, Isco and Iniesta do not have the same reliance on goals and assists for their team contribution).
German football should be a model for the English game to follow. We readily praise the Germans at every major tournament, we see the brilliance of Dortmund and Bayern, but there has been a failure to follow the procedures that make them such a success. Stars like Firmino, despite Brazilian football’s decision to regularly overlook him, make the game a more entertaining spectacle.
Hoffenheim signed a young talent back in 2010 and, with patience and trust, allowed him to develop into one of the star players in the world’s most watched sporting league. English clubs, for whatever reason, are unlikely to do this in the same way. Firmino provided problems for Hoffenheim’s management at times, he was inconsistent and occasionally made the wrong decisions in crucial areas of the pitch, but they stuck by a player they believed to have outstanding potential.
Whether money stops English clubs from demonstrating this kind of faith or not, it is time the Premier League sides took a leaf out of the Germans’ book. Firmino is a sign of how far Liverpool have fallen and just how strong the Bundesliga is.
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