“A different class of player” – Sheffield Wednesday fan pundit makes Fernando Forestieri claim | OneFootball

This article is part of Football League World’s ‘Terrace Talk’ series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Sheffield Wednesday are 19 matches into their League One season and so far, so good as far as manager Darren Moore will be concerned.

The Owls are just one point behind the automatic promotion places, with Ipswich Town occupying second spot, and with Plymouth Argyle just three points ahead of them at the summit, Wednesday fans have reasons to be cheerful right now.

The Yorkshire outfit recruited impressively this past summer, with a lot of experienced ex-Championship faces coming in through the door at Hillsborough, and so far it seems to be doing the trick combined with the players that were already at the club.

Quiz: What shirt number are these 25 current Sheffield Wednesday players?

1 of 25

CAMERON DAWSON

25 31

Despite this season’s good form, clubs are always missing that final piece of the jigsaw, and FLW’s Owls fan pundit Callum Maxted believes that the enigmatic yet controversial Fernando Forestieri could be that player.

“He was a different class of player who we haven’t seen anything like since (he left), and having a player with that quality who could just do something out of nothing was something I had never experienced before,” Callum said.

“We’ve had players who were good, but we’ve never had someone who was that good, who had the ability to just beat a man, keep the ball close to him, get shots off, score goals, and in his first season especially looked like he wanted to play for the club.

“It went a bit sour after the first season – he had offers from Premier League teams and it’s kind of hard for me to defend him on that, but the type of player he was, he was something we haven’t seen in my lifetime – I know we had players like Paolo Di Canio and Benito Carbone who were exactly like that, but we haven’t seen anything like that in 30 years, so for me he was the best player I’ve seen at Hillsborough.”

Forestieri notched 40 goals in 134 appearances for the Owls, with his best seasons being his first two when he netted 27 times.

The Argentinian’s stature faded though as time went on, and in 2020 he joined Udinese of Italy – he is now plying his trade out in Malaysia for Johor Darul Ta’zim.

The Verdict

Despite some of the controversies he was involved in when a Wednesday player, there’s no denying that Forestieri was very exciting.

His first two seasons at Hillsborough especially there was a case to be made for him being the best attacking midfielder in the whole league, and the Premier League interest proved that.

Forestieri is still only 32 and has dominated the Malaysian Super League in 2022, so his talent is still there – he’s just showing it at a lower level.

Make no mistake about it though, slotting a prime Forestieri into the current Wednesday side would be absolute box office.