When a striker is in the form of his life, banging in goals left, right and centre, it is probably not the best idea to serve up the simplest of finishes on a silver platter.
But that is exactly what Nicolas Hofler did in Freiburg’s 4-2 home defeat to Bayer Leverkusen, his misplaced back pass gobbled up by the ravenous Lucas Alario.
The Bundesliga hotshot is producing numbers even Robert Lewandowski and Erling Haaland would be proud of at the moment.
His second against Freiburg, slammed home emphatically from close range, was his sixth in five games and his seventh in eight appearances in all competitions this season.
If Leverkusen were fretting about where the goals would come from after losing Kai Havertz and Kevin Volland to Chelsea and Monaco respectively, they needn’t have worried.
Alario spent much of last season wasting away on the bench as Havertz and Volland fired Leverkusen into a Europa League spot but, free from the shackles and thrust into Peter Bosz’s starting XI, he has suddenly gone from £16 million supersub to star man.
His decision to reject a summer move to Tottenham Hotspur, then, might have been justified already.
With Harry Kane very much the main man in north London, Alario snubbed the chance to fight for Premier League glory under Jose Mourinho. Quite simply, he didn’t want to waste another year on the sidelines.
“We had the chance of (signing for) Tottenham,” agent Pedro Aldave told TNT. “(But) he chose to stay.”
It is far too early, purple patch or not, to suggest that Alario would have been a better addition to Mourinho’s strikeforce than Benfica loanee Carlos Vinicius and vice versa.
But if the Leverkusen’s lethal centre-forward had made the move to north London, his chances of becoming the number one striker at a massive European club would have gone up in smoke somewhere across the Channel.
Alario decided to stay put. And he has been rewarded with the role he has always dreamed of at the Bay Arena.
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