Armin Hodzic’s career in Liverpool will not be remembered that much when he retires , may be the youngster’s spell with the Reds will remain as a small footnote on where he started his journey.
The young Bosnian striker was released by Liverpool last year without playing a single match, but now it seems Brendan Rodgers’ decision to release him could turn out to be a costly mistake.
The 20-year-old promising player then moved to Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb, and there also luck didn’t favour him as Hodzic couldn’t win over his boss straight away. He didn’t featured at all until February this year while finishing the season with just nine matches under his belt and two goals.
This season the story is completely different. After just eight minutes of the first match of this campaign, he was handed a start, and stunned the supporters along with football pundits by firing a brilliant hat-trick.
From that moment it was quite clear, Hodzic will be a regular starter for Dinamo Zagreb, and currently running with nine league goals in as many as nine appearances for his club so far this season.
As a Bosnia-Herzegovina under-21 international, he was recently included in the senior team, also named as a substitute for the recent 2-0 defeat to Gareth Bale’s Wales, but yet to make his debut for the senior national team.
Hodzic is primarily a striker who can also play out wide and has an exceptional eye for goal.
However, his release from Liverpool in 2014 was not as straightforward as they didn’t believe in his talent.
Hodzic actually needed a work permit in England but didn’t qualify for that due to some unknown reasons. So Liverpool had to loan him out in his own country with Željezničar Sarajevo.
But the current striker crisis at Anfield may force the Liverpool fans to think a bit, if there was actually a will on behalf of the club, they could have renewed the young lad’s contract and sent him out on loan to a European club and qualify for work permit later on.
Maybe this was not a part of the club’s strategy, and now if he continues to perform like he has done this season, he will rather make Liverpool hierarchy regret not investing more in him when it was time.