Adam Dennehey WAFU manager
At the time of writing this, Utd are very close to capturing the signature of Borussia Dortmund’s Shinji Kagawa. The Japanese midfielder has just one year left on his current contract and has told his club that he will not be extending it as he wants a move to the Premier League. The reported transfer fee is in the range of £12-15m rising to around £22m with bonuses.
Some fickle fans are already labelling Kagawa as a ‘Glazernomics’ buy as the player has a huge marketable value seeing as he’s arguably Japan’s most famous talent and would no doubt bring in more revenue than Park Ji-Sung has from being a South Korean superstar.
Whilst this is certainly not a bad thing, in fact it could make United a lot of money over the next few years, it is definitely not the main reason we have decided to sign him. So for those who are unaware or those who know little about him, I will try and brief you on what type of player you can expect to see in the United red next season.
Kagawa is a 23 year old Japanese international who plays as an attacking midfielder, preferably central but he is also able play to the left or the right of an attacking three.
He joined Dortmund from Japanese club Cerezo Osaka for just £350,000 in 2010 and he has been instrumental for the German champions ever since, scoring 26 goals and assisting 10 in two seasons in yellow and black helping them to win 2 Bundesliga titles and just 2 weeks ago he starred in their 5-2 cup final win over Bayern Munich, scoring and assisting a goal all under the watchful eye of Sir Alex Ferguson and his assistant Mike Phelan.
He is very slight in figure so may be forced to bulk up a little but his energy levels and team ethic will need no addressing coming from a Dortmund team who press very high up the pitch.
His small frame helps him be the player he is though, similar to David Silva he has very good close control and is able to twist and turn defenders before they know it.
There are many elements of Kagawa’s game that remind me of Juventus and Czech Republic legend, Pavel Nedved, he’s got two good feet and his link up play with his teammates is first class.
Kagawa will give us something that we don’t have at United, for years we have lacked a midfielder that can run at the opposition and since the early years of Paul Scholes we haven’t had a central midfielder that is able to get 10-15 goals a season like most of the other top teams have and I’m convinced that Shinji Kagawa is that man.
By Joe Taylor @JoeyTmufc
That will be Pavel Nedved 🙂
Of course, my apologies!
Sorry Joe for that mistake, I missed that when putting it in earlier. It is Pavel Nedved not Paolo Nedved – who would've been a cross between Paolo Di Canio and Nedved, now that'd have been some player.