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If Jeremy Beadle were still with us, Fabio Borini fans would be super rich claiming their £250 each time the Sunderland man has injured himself in comedy fashion.
Of course our favourite Borini-ism was when the Italian flop became the only striker in Premier League history to miss a glorious chance by smacking the ball into his own face rather than the opponent’s net.
Finding space inside the box in April’s 2-0 home defeat to Leicester, the former Liverpool attacker summed up his awful 2016-17 season by somehow completely missing the target and instead kicking the ball into his own pyatt.
When Fabio Borini kicked the ball into his own face...https://t.co/fnJ6UKGFCn
— Football Fours (@Football_Fours) July 20, 2016
Now that the misery of that campaign has subsided, it really was a rare highlight of Borini’s latter months at the Stadium of Light and still raises a chortle.
Other classics in the Borini collection include him kicking the turf instead of the football when trying to take a free-kick at Southampton in the same season and ruling himself out of action for three months as a result with a groin strain.
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And with the latest Tees-Wear derby defeat fresh in the mind, who could forget Fabio trying to do something nice by handing his jersey to a young fan at the Riverside last season at the very moment Sunderland fans were jeering their players with a chorus of “you’re not fit to wear the shirt”.
Getting in a little shooting practice prior to the match commencing, Borini had hit the spectator with a characteristically wayward effort. His attempt at saying “sorry” was misconstrued by furious Mackems convinced he was taking the pee by literally handing over the top he had been declared as unfit to wear.
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Borini has a little history of this type of misinterpretation too. After scoring for Liverpool against Newcastle and unveiling his trademark “knife between the teeth” celebration to a bemused Anfield, one national newspaper accused him of paying a “pathetic and embarrassing” tribute to Luis Suarez’ infamous bite incident before hastily retracting the statement the following morning.
So you’d think a man with Borini’s track record of freak fails would know better than to attempt an acrobatic overhead clearance.
In his latest comedy video, Borini managed to nearly break his neck in Milan’s 2-0 win over Sassuolo last night. Watch it here, seemingly filmed through someone’s car windscreen:
Fabio Borini • Ultimate Skill#SassuoloMilan pic.twitter.com/DyrjkLj8aP
— AmazingMilan.net ⚫ (@AmazingMilan) November 5, 2017
Somehow, the clumsy Italian’s left foot goes out from underneath him as his right foot connects with the ball - freakishly upending him. His head hits the ground in a painful manner and his body flops to the ground.
It should be beyond the realms of anatomical possibility for the human body to perform such a stunt but action man Fabio is made of stern stuff.
The incident occurred in the 26th minute when the score was 0-0, with Borini later playing a key role in the team's second goal before being substituted off in the 82nd minute.
Brilliant. Hope it didn’t hurt.