Federico Macheda? Remember him. Well the young Italian won’t be dawdling about in the reserves at Old Trafford much longer as he has secured a loan-deal to Bundesliga side Stuttgart for the rest of the season.
It would be fair to say Macheda hasn’t enjoyed his fair share of luck at Old Trafford since he burst on the scene with that goal against Aston Villa in the title run-in of 2008/09.
He’s suffered disappointing experiences whilst out on loan at Sampdoria in his native Italy and with QPR last season when injury ensured he returned to United far sooner than both Sir Alex Ferguson and Mark Hughes would have wanted.
At United competition for places hasn’t helped the striker. Thanks to the arrival of Robin van Persie he is now the fifth choice striker at the club only figuring twice – off the bench – this season. Despite still being only 21, he needs to play games and the move to Stuttgart should hopefully see him get that opportunity, which he badly needs, to impress.
Even if he does impress out in Germany it’s going to be hard for Kiko to become a regular at the club. Perhaps it would have been better had he been loaned out at the start of the season with an option to return to United immediately if one or more of our strikers were to pick up a lengthy injury.
Yes he has figured in the reserves and been around the first-team squad in training but it wouldn’t have slowed down his development would it. Saying that though he perhaps should have been loaned out at the start of last season rather than in January for his ill-fated spell with QPR, at least that way he would have been playing regularly rather than brief cameos in the League Cup.
For Macheda this loan-move comes at a pivotal time in his career.
If he does well, it will keep Stuttgart happy and alert other clubs to his signature for a move in the summer. That’ll only please United who will be more than happy to have 3-4 clubs jostling for his services; if it is deemed that a fresh-start is what he needs right-now in his career.
If he does poorly, there will still be clubs looking to buy him, but they will be of a lesser quality and those clubs may make a cruel assessment of why he hasn’t ‘made it’ at United by coming to a conclusion that he just isn’t good enough to make it as a striker in a top-league and maybe there might be non-football reasons why he has never been given a chance.
That would be a harsh judgement on Macheda who has never been given a run of games to impress. Now though it’s up to him to prove his critics wrong. If Mame Diouf can score goals in Italy, surely Kiko can do it too.
By Adam Dennehey @ADennehey87
