Football Player's Biography 7: Alberto Aquilani

Full name	Alberto Aquilani
Date of birth	7 July 1984 (age 26)
Place of birth	Rome, Italy
Height	1.86 m (6 ft 1 in)
Playing position	Midfielder

Alberto Aquilani (born 7 July 1984) is an Italian occasional footballer who plays for Serie A club Juventus on loan from Premier League side Liverpool. He is also part of the Italian national team. Aquilani is a central midfielder, who can operate in a holding position or an attacking position in the hole behind the strikers.
Aquilani began his career at Roma and, after a brief loan spell at Triestina, returned to the Serie A club where he became a regular in the Roma side during the 2005–06 season. Unfortunately in the following season, he suffered a thigh injury and was ruled out for several months. He moved to Liverpool for the start of the 2009–10 season, in a deal that, including add ons, could potentially be worth £20m in total. Though in August 2010, after being criticised for a lack of starts at Anfield, he joined Juventus on loan until the end of the season.
Internationally, Aquilani has represented Italy at international level youth level and at the Euro 2008. He made his full international debut in November 2006 in a 1–1 draw against Turkey.

Club career

Roma

In 2001, at the age of sixteen, Chelsea and Arsenal offered him contracts, but he declined the offers to continue playing for his youth club Roma.^[1]
He made his debut in Serie A at the age of eighteen on 10 May 2003 under then manager Fabio Capello against Torino. He was loaned to Serie B club Triestina for the 2003–04 season to gain first team experience.
Returning to Roma in the 2004–05 season, he broke into the starting XI. In the 2005–06 season, he scored the second goal in the derby victory on 26 February 2006, a victory in which Roma broke the record for the most consecutive wins in Serie A,^[2] a record later broken by Internazionale in the 2006–07 season.
In the following season, Aquilani was expected to be one of Roma's best players. He was given the number 8 shirt previously worn by Matteo Ferrari. Unfortunately, an injury forced him out of the game for several months.^[3]^[4] Aquilani returned to the field in May 2007 and featured in three games towards the end of the season, including the last two.
He also played in the Champions League against Real Madrid, where he had an excellent game.^{[citation needed]} He scored two long range goals in the first two matches of the 2007–08 season against Palermo and Siena.^{[citation needed]} Although he was injured in October 2007,^[5] he returned to squad in January 2008.
Aquilani was injured again on 22 October 2008 against Chelsea.^[6] He returned to action on 11 January 2009 against Milan but picked up another injury in February.^[7] Although he played against Arsenal as a last minute substitute on 11 March 2009,^[8] he did not play in the rest of the season.
On 26 May 2009, Aquilani signed a new contract with Roma until 2013, adding three more years to previous deal.
^[9]^[10]
He was nicknamed "Il Principino" (Italian for "The Little Prince") by the Roma faithful.

Liverpool

On 5 August 2009, Liverpool announced that they had agreed a deal with Roma for the transfer of Aquilani, subject to a medical.^[11]^[12] The club subsequently announced that the player had passed the medical and signed a 5 year contract on 7 August 2009.^[13] Roma revealed that the fee was €20 million (£17 million) plus sporting bonus.^[14] Aquilani was handed the number 4 shirt, last worn by Sami Hyypiä, who joined Bayer Leverkusen at the end of the 2008–09 season. Although it was initially thought that he was recruited as a replacement for deep-lying playmaker Xabi Alonso who had left the same summer to join Real Madrid, Aquilani actually prefers to play further up the pitch and is considered to be more of a dynamic attacking midfielder than a holding playmaker.
Aquilani made his Liverpool reserves debut with a 15 minutes substitute appearance in a 2–0 win against Sunderland reserves on 21 October 2009.^[15]
Aquilani's first game for Liverpool was a 2–1 4th round Carling Cup defeat to Arsenal, coming on in the 77th minute for Damien Plessis.^[16] He made his long awaited Premier league debut on 9 November 2009, as a late substitute against Birmingham City in a 2–2 draw.^[17] He then made a 30 second appearance against Hungarian club Debrecen on 24 November which Liverpool won 1–0 courtesy of a goal from David Ngog. Aquilani made his first start against Fiorentina in a Champions League match on 9 December 2009, where Liverpool lost 2–1.^[18] Aquilani made his first Premier League start against Wolverhampton Wanderers on 26 December 2009 and received a standing ovation from the Kop when he was substituted in the 84th minute for Daniel Pacheco.^[19]
Aquilani next started for Liverpool in their 2–0 win over Bolton Wanderers, where he got his second assist for Liverpool, again setting up Dirk Kuyt. He scored his first goal for Liverpool on 15 March 2010 against Portsmouth and he also assisted Fernando Torres for the fourth Liverpool goal. He was voted man of the match by the fans on Liverpool's official website. Aquilani also gained the man of the match award in his next Liverpool league start, against Fulham in a goalless draw at Anfield. In his next start for Liverpool he finished the match with three assists during a 4–0 away win against Burnley On 29 April 2010 he scored a goal against Atlético Madrid in the Europa League, cancelling out Atlético's first leg goal from Diego Forlán by scoring moments before half-time. Despite a great performance from Aquilani on the night, Liverpool eventually went out of the semi-finals on the away goal rule after Yossi Benayoun had put Liverpool 2–0 up, as Diego Forlán scored his second of the tie in exta-time to take the aggregate score to 2–2.^[20] Aquilani won the LFC Man Of The Match award again after his performance.^[21] Aquilani also played in Liverpool's last 2 games of the season, a 2–0 defeat at the hands of Chelsea at Anfield^[22] and a goalless draw away to Hull City at the KC Stadium.^[23] In total, Aquilani played 26 times in his debut season for the reds, scoring twice but rarely playing the full 90 minutes.
With the departure of Rafael Benítez to Internazionale in June 2010, new manager Roy Hodgson played him in some pre-season games, but stated publicly in mid-August that Aquilani may go back to his native Italy on loan for a full season, where playing regularly he could gain match fitness.^[24]

Juventus

On 21 August 2010, a deal between Liverpool and Juventus was agreed, to allow Aquilani to go on a one season loan deal to Juventus with an option of a permanent move.^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28] He will wear the number 14 shirt for Juventus. He made his debut for the Turin Giants on 12 September in a 3–3 draw with Sampdoria. He scored his first goal for the club on 17 October in a 4–0 home win against Lecce.

International career

At youth level, Aquilani was capped for Italy at 2001 European Under-21 Football Championship qualifying. He won 2003 UEFA European Under-19 Football Championship with Italy and scored one goal. He was then promoted to the U21 team and took part in 2006 European Under-21 Football Championship qualifying, but missed out on the final tournament due to injury.^[29]
Aquilani made his senior debut on 15 November 2006 in a 1–1 friendly against Turkey.^[30] He played as a regular during the 2007 U-21 Championship held in the Netherlands, scoring two goals, and being named in the "UEFA Team of the Tournament". Italy finished 5th and qualified for the 2008 Olympics. He was named to the 23-man roster for Euro 2008, his first major international tournament. He came on as a sub in Italy's third game of the tournament, which was a 2–0 victory over France. He started Italy's quarter-final match against Spain due to the suspensions to Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso. Italy lost 4–2 in a shootout after a 0–0 tie through 120 minutes.^[31] He also said to liverpool that if he had a choice between the two clubs it was juventus was his prefferd destination
Aquilani scored his first goal for Italy during the 2010 World Cup qualification match against Montenegro on 15 October 2008, a tally he doubled later in the same match.^[32] In spite of this, the national team manager Marcelo Lippi opted not to include him in the 23-man Italian squad for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.