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Last summer, Fabio Borini had the chance to leave Liverpool for either Sunderland or QPR. He blocked both deals by refusing to negotiate a contract, preferring instead to remain at Liverpool and fight for his place. At the time, it could have been called a bold and gutsy choice. In retrospect, it was a monumental mistake.
Now, reports out of Italy claim the out of favour 24-year-old could be blocking another transfer deal getting from done. Rumour has it that Lazio have agreed a deal with Liverpool: they would pay a €1M loan fee for Borini this season and a further €7M to make it permanent next summer. And rumour further has it Borini is also blocking this deal.
While the player is ready to move on from Liverpool, the claim is that he wants to stay in England and this has made him disinclined to agree to a move to Lazio. If he wants playing time, though, he may have no choice, and the suggestion is that he has been given a week to make up his mind or Lazio are moving on to other targets.
Borini has spent most of his career in England following a move to the Chelsea academy when he was 16 years old, and any time the chance to return to Italy has been raised as a possibility, he and his agent have seemed consistently cool on the idea. This makes rumours he doesn’t want to go to Lazio sound, at the very least, reasonable.
In the end, though, he could still choose to go. If the reported fees involved are true—€7M is only around £4M after all—it could also be that an English club will come in for him over the next week now that his price has apparently been set. Or it might all end with Borini stuck at Liverpool for one more season.
After how things went last summer, any of the options on the table really do seem equally possible.
