A Europa League third qualifying round tie does not exactly get the pulses racing.
But for Fabio Borini tonight’s match away to Belarus side FC Gomel holds special signifance — and not just because he will make his competitive debut for Liverpool.
The £10.4million signing from Roma said: “When I was younger, my family would take children from a village near Gomel to Italy because when the Chernobyl disaster happened, a lot of nuclear radiation went over the area.
“The children needed to breathe good air and get medical checks to make sure everything was fine. We helped them by taking them for one month a year in the summer so we could do all of these things for them and let them see Italy. I have a tattoo that is my name written in Russian to remember this.”
Borini, the former Chelsea striker, is in line to start as Craig Bellamy and Luis Suarez are on Olympic duty while Andy Carroll — who has been linked with West Ham — has a “slight groin strain”.
