The Italian footballer who scored the most goals in the 2022/23 season.
The Turkish Süper Lig is one of mine guilty pleasures darker. I have to be honest, I can’t help but be impressed by a league that has been rummaging through the baskets of elite football for years to find heroes that Turkish fans make the legend of their club, welcoming them with ever more kitschy compilations. Obviously, seeing the Süper Lig in Italy is practically impossible and therefore my passion was reduced to simple doomscrolling of the squads, players who were once strong – or, at least, it could be assumed that they would become so – and who have now probably been attracted perhaps by the beauties of Turkey, perhaps by the passion of the fans or perhaps, simply, by the money .
Finally, the Red string that unites the Turkish teams is this: in Galatasaray there are Icardi and, perhaps for a little while longer, Zaniolo, but also Mertens and Torreira; In the Fenerbahce Joao Pedro, Miha Zajc and Batshuayi played and in the Basaksehir there is still Stefano Okaka. That of Turkish clubs is a fairly consolidated trend which, however, we only realized a few years ago, when newly promoted Fatih Karagümrük showed up at the Süper Lig shopping in Italy.
Karagümrük in summer 2020 is a post-modern market: in summer they arrive Erwin Zukanovic from SPAL, then Lucas Biglia from Milan, Jure Balkovec from Verona ed Emiliano Viviano, released for a year after splitting with Sporting. In January, then, the club decided to further up the ante with the arrivals of free agents Andrea Bertolacci e you Fabio Borini and then with that of Pata Castro from SPAL, announced together with the new coach, the former collaborator of De Zerbi, Francesco Farioli.
Everythingin particular, is greeted with a very minimal tweet, which reads “The Italian Job”the sunglasses and Italian flag emoji and the words they, according to Google Translate, mean “Fabio Borini è a Black Customs”. In announcing it, one of those kitsch videos appears, with a background halfway between funk and electronics and in which his goals are collected. Music fades into the background only on one occasion, to remember his goal against Manchester City in the League Cup final, then lost by his home country of Sunderland.
Borini seems to be the player who is most fond of the Süper Lig and Turkey – together with Viviano he is the only one left until the expiry of the contract. “In general, here they dote on us, perhaps because they are still in love with our golden age, the 90s-2000s“, says the former AC Milan player in ainterview to Gianluca DiMarzio. His words seem a bit vague, as he also cites the Italians’ focus on tactics and work ethic as a reason for the fans’ esteem, despite his teammate, Steven Caulker, underlined how Italian players were often found smoking in the locker room.
However, for a player treated almost like a disgrace at Milan it must have been nice to find the approval of his fans again. The path of him from player whose only function was to run, sweat and work for others it probably consumed him deeply, not helping his coaches and also ruining his own reputation. Before Turkey, Borini had played 200 games between Serie A and the Premier League with just 32 goals scored and his best seasons, first at Sunderland and first in Rome, had seen him barely reach 10 goals in total. With these numbers in mind, it will become even more impressive to read that, in the last season, Fabio Borini scored 21 goals and provided 8 assists in 32 games.
As much as one can make the tare on the low level of the Turkish championship – which Borini himself expected to be very low, only to be amazed in the opposite sense – it is impossible not to notice a radical difference in his way of playing. Borini has found greater lucidity with the ball, to levels never reached even in his best seasons. If you look at Borini’s goals against Roma, you see decidedly remedied solutions: his goals are almost all dirty, built with bizarre and inelegant plays, with approximate dribbling or uncoordinated tap-ins.
There is only one real trait in common between then and now: the way Borini kicks while keeping the ball pinned to the ground. It’s absurd: to be such an inelegant striker, Borini has a surprising ability to finish low shots. It is no coincidence that his first goal of the season also comes this way. It’s a strangely elegant goal, because Borini receives in the middle of the space and controls and shoots with two touches, kicking with a very clean cross right foot. The shot is strong enough but not as strong as one would expect seeing the movements of Borini, who almost seems to make his right foot fly off, unbalancing in a conspicuous way and almost giving the impression of falling. He succeeds much better a couple of months later, in which he scores against Hatayspor by kicking, this time with much more force, from an incredibly tight angle and making the goalkeeper look bad.
In between, Borini scores two braces. The first, against Ankaragucu, is for a true centre-forward: he scores the first by heading a cross from the former Inter Caner Erkin and the second placing under measure a cross from the right of the Atalantino Ebrima Colley. To understand the weight of a Borini header, just think that it is only the third that he has scored in his entire professional career, almost three years after the second and more than eight years after the first. The second brace, however, was scored against Fenerbahçe and the first goal is a manifesto of his status this season.
It is an extraordinary goal in all its development: Karagümrük recover the ball with a fine re-aggression, carried by full-back Dursun who sends the ball to Colley’s feet, who, with an unsuccessful sombrero, sends Attila Szalai empty and tries to take the inside of the field. Colley’s play makes the Fener defense practically collapse on him, leaving Borini all the space necessary to call for a pass in the center of the area. However, Colley sees the midfielder Yuksek shorten and has to cross from before.
Colley’s is not a nice cross: Borini has to slow down a bit to control it but the defender is attacking behind. What happens next is difficult to explain: Borini seems to control with the outside and carry the ball with him, using his opponent’s body as a pivot to rotate, while with his arm he keeps him at a distance and, falling, kicks with his left foot, putting such a force as to fold the goalkeeper’s hands, definitely surprised by the execution.
Sliding goals are a class of goals that have a fairly unique aesthetic but this one from Borini is really special for its way of imparting a power to the ball that is beyond any logic. There is nothing in this goal that we can associate with his narrative, except perhaps the perseverance in kicking while falling and with the man on. The way he controls and turns and the force he gives to the ball seem to come from players like Kane or Benzema, not from a striker who up to the age of 31 has never made double figures in the league.
This is Borini’s day: after this goal he finds his first assist of the season, receiving his back to goal, turning around and serving Kouassi deeply with his left foot, and then also the second goal, from a penalty. The fact that, in the end, Fenerbahçe still went home with a 5-4 win makes it simply unfair for what is arguably the moment that launches Borini’s season.
From the return from the world break to the interruption due to the earthquake in early February, Borini played 8 games scoring 6 goals and 4 assists. In the second match, won 4-1 against Trabzonspor, he seems unstoppable: in the sixth minute he offers what is marked as an assist for Ozdoev but which in reality has little of a real assist; in the half hour, at 1-1, he scores a slide on the far post, emulating the second goal by Haaland in the Manchester derby, and at the end of the first half, his pressure on the former Barcelona Marc Bartra he forces the error under construction, making him slide and forcing him to a last man foul that leaves Trabzonspor in ten.
In the second half Karagümrük remained in ten for a red card in Colley and the goalkeeper made a triple save without any logic. This is the moment in which Borini definitively takes the stage: on a transition he enters the field, aims Stryger Larsen and crosses, with his left foot, finding the run of Matthew Ricci that crosses on the fly for the 3-1. Stryger Larsen will always be his victim in the last action of his match, when he aims and jumps inside, shooting around the far post and only catching the post in a moment of total technical omnipotence.
Such a dominant Borini is something difficult to process. Looking at the videos of him in Italy, you really see a player out of context even in a team not exactly rich in individual technique. Of course, there are some spectacular goals: on at least two occasions he takes the ball isolated on the wing and returns inside the field by kicking at the far post, but we don’t see anything comparable to what we’ve seen this season. In the Süper Lig, Borini has found new solutions: he scores more and makes more assists, plays closer to goal and is more motivated.
In his relaunch there is definitely the intervention of Andrea Pirlo: «I was immediately trusted by Andrea Pirlo and his staff. And a striker always looks to his coach for that stimulus to do better. I immediately felt at ease because it left me a less defensive striker”, he had said in the same interview with Di Marzio. And indeed it is seen quite intuitively. With Pirlo, Borini is a full-fledged striker: he still moves a lot on the pitch but his movements are more directed towards goal. Looking at the statistics, one immediately sees that he shoots more than in his entire career to date and almost double what he did at Milan.
This season Borini has found solutions with extraordinary ease and in his twenty goals there was a great variety: there are many goals as a true centre-forward, which is built with perfect cuts in the area or by reading confused situations well, perhaps the best quality of his game without the ball even in recent years. His moments of omnipotence split difficult matches, making him capable of being decisive like never before. He certainly won’t score Haaland’s goals and he won’t return to Italy as a great striker, but Borini’s is certainly a good revenge.
It seems clear that the decision to give up an elite championship has done his career good, putting him in a less stressful context and in a lower level league. This season has delivered Borini is the Italian player with the most goals scored in a first division professional league, as well as the fourth best scorer in the Süper Lig – behind teammate Mbaye Diagne, Icardi and Enner Valencia – and third best assistman. A year ago no one would have expected something like this but this result must be fully recognized for his desire to question himself and the skill of Andrea Pirlo – who left the team in April due to differences over the renewal – in building his space for him.
This season, Borini stopped celebrating with his usual knife between his teeth: perhaps he understood that to have a place on the pitch he no longer has to be the one who fights the most and that now he can deserve it simply because he can score. like any other striker. Pirlo himself recognized his great season and still trusted him, taking him to Sampdoria to try to return to Serie A. A recognition that, however, Fabio Borini can say he fully deserved.