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One of Emre Can's key talents, Liverpool fans were told when he arrived at the club over the summer, was his flexibility. Though he was most comfortable as a physical, defence-mind box-to-box midfielder, he can and had at some point played just about every position bar striker and centre-half. And had often looked quite good doing it.
You can now add centre-half to the list, at least if his performance against the Republic of Ireland with Germany's U21s over the weekend is anything to go by. Wearing the number 11, Can was an odd sight lined up as the right-sided centre-half, though on the whole he did appear to put in a solid shift against a rather overmatched opponent.
His midfielder's instincts often did seem to come to the fore, with probing diagonal passes and a tendency to romp forward defining his day. Against more lively opposition that could easily have led to problems at the back, though of course it's far from a certainty that he would have been quite so adventurous had the Germans been up against somebody stronger.
At the end of the day, Can remains a midfielder first—even as a defender, it was clearly the area of the pitch he wanted to be in—but for a player who arrived at the club with a reputation for being able to play just about any position, it's one more to add to the list.
Video by Mostar
