Fabinho’s move from Monaco to Liverpool on Monday came as a bolt from the blue.
It seemed inevitable that this would be the summer that the five-year veteran of the Stade Louis II club would finally move on, yet no one seemed prepared for the video of him bedecked in the Reds’ new kit trumpeting his arrival at Anfield.
Indeed, Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain were widely thought to be leading the race for the 24-year-old Brazilian, who has already experienced a great deal in his short career, including a loan spell with Real Madrid and a Champions League semi-final.
But while the speed of this move came as a shock, the manner in which the Liverpool media team had prepared for the announcement suggested it had been in the pipeline for some time.
Indeed, speaking to RMC, the player even suggested it might have taken place in January when he revealed: “In the last transfer window, things were a little difficult. It was almost done, but I stayed.”
Monaco vice president Vadim Vasilyev, meanwhile, admitted that the player had arrived in 2013 on loan from Rio Ave “on his tiptoes”.
If the magnitude of his arrival was not immediately realised in the principality, that of his departure certainly will be.
He has been the mainstay of a Monaco side that have punched above their weight under head coach Leonardo Jardim, most notably winning Ligue 1 during the 2016-17 season and producing a winning run that has never been seen before in French top-flight football.
Fabinho, meanwhile, scored arguably the pivotal goal in Monaco’s quest for a Champions League place for next term, converting a stoppage-time penalty against Saint-Etienne in the penultimate week of the season to give his side a 1-0 victory when it seemed they might slip to fourth.
A defensive midfielder by trade, he contributed an impressive seven goals in Ligue 1, including four penalties. Indeed, with 19 successful spot-kick conversions from 20 attempts, by rights he should have been first choice in this regard for Monaco, though Radamel Falcao would more often than not pull rank when on the field.
Nevertheless, he has earned the respect of the Colombian, just as he has won over everyone else at the club.
“He’s very mature and has progressed a lot here,” he said last year. “His status has changed. He doesn’t speak much but works a great deal for the team. He’s very important.”
Indeed, in Monaco’s current project, which is about buying relatively cheap young players, developing them before selling them on at a profit, he is something of a poster boy.
He arrived for around €6 million and has been sold for around eight times that amount at €45m before potential bonuses are included.
Perhaps he could have gone for more 12 months ago, but amid losing stars such as Benjamin Mendy, Bernardo Silva and Kylian Mbappe, Monaco had to draw the line at some point, and Fabinho was the unlucky loser in that regard.
Of course, his performances suffered, as he accepted.
“I was closer to leaving than staying. Playing in that context was not good. My head was elsewhere,” he admitted to Nice Matin.
“Unconsciously, I was not giving my maximum. I was not trying to give a bad image, I could never do that.”
It is that kind of confession that has made him such a popular figure in the dressing room of Monaco, and it was notable that new manager Jurgen Klopp picked that out
“We have signed a fantastic player, but someone who is an equally fantastic person I think,” Klopp told Liverpool's website. “His reputation as a character in the dressing room and his attitude in training has come through from everyone we speak to.”
In a squad that was thin last season, Fabinho will bring depth not only due to his quality but his versatility. He is able to play as a defensive or box-to-box midfielder, while he has also featured frequently at right-back in the past.
It is in the midfield that he has been at his best, however. He describes himself primarily as an “organiser”, but it is important to stress that is not simply on a defensive basis. He will seek to get on the ball as regularly as possible and construct attacks from deep as the fulcrum of the side.
Indeed, it is a measure of his success that despite a self-confessed disappointing season, he remained one of the top tacklers in Ligue 1 and boasted impressive passing and aerial duels figures. He was not up to the standards he had set a year earlier, but the context had been more trying.
Now his challenge at Liverpool will be to rediscover the form that made him such a lynchpin of Monaco’s side.
With no distraction of World Cup football – he has four caps for his country, which scarcely do justice to his qualities – he will be ready to hit the ground running at Anfield and with his work ethic is set to be another hit for a Liverpool recruitment team that does little wrong.
