According to Sam Wood, Emre Can has a bright future and would do well to acquire a simplicity to his game.
Emre Can is a German midfielder. He joined the club in 2014 and his shares have been steadily increasing in his years at the club. Aged only 22, he has a bright future in front of him.
He began his career at German champions Bayern Munich, where he mainly played in the reserve side, before transferring to Bayer Leverkusen in 2013. After a great season there, he moved to Liverpool for £9.75 million. Can has made 5 appearances for Germany, his debut coming in September 2015.
Can started as a substitute for Liverpool, making his debut in Liverpool’s second game of the 2014/15 season against Manchester City. Despite being a midfielder, Brendan Rodgers deployed him in defence. Many Liverpool fans agreed that he was too risky and not solid enough to excel there. However this was ignored by the majority as it wasn’t his primary position.
He scored his first goal of the 15/16 season against Rubin Kazan in the Europa League group stage. By this time, the current charismatic manager JürgenKlopp had taken charge and started to make changes. One of these was to move Emre into a central midfield position and he proved himself as a starter. He won the ‘Liverpool Football Club Young Player of the Year’ award for the 2015/16 season.
His game has massively improved over the years but there are still many points of his game he can still improve. For instance, on many occasions this season, he has been caught holding on to the ball for too long, therefore losing it and presenting the opposition with an opportunity.
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Also, fancy flicks have sometimes been over the top but this is very typical of a young player trying to impress/ A simple pass or a through ball have been done exuberantly, sometimes leading to a mistake or a tricky situation for the player on the receiving end. If he can cut these out of his game, he will become a very important player to the team.
Since Emre has been moved to central midfielder he has became a constant starter for the team. It gives him more freedom and opportunity to get forward than his previous defensive role did. His defence work is another skill of his that can be improved, but with age comes experience.
According to Whoscored, Emre has featured in 49 games this season, scoring 2 goals against Aston Villa and Rubin Kazan. He has 2 assists, 12 yellow cards and has played a total of 3676 minutes on the pitch. He also has an impressive pass accuracy of 82.2%
Arguably Can’s best game this season was the incredible 4-3 win against Dortmund in the Europa League quarter final second leg. According to Squawka, he had an 82% passing accuracy, created 1 chance , had 4 take ones completed and won 67% of his aerial duels. His surging runs and searching through balls may have gone unnoticed due to the emotion of the game, but analyzing afterwards, he put in a fine performance.
In short, Emre Can has come on leaps and bounds over the season but he still has a way to go to become the complete player. Address the fancy flicks and he can become a brilliant player.
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