Lingard's 'Great Career' Foreigner Comes, Part 2 Paju FC Borja 'Surprise Recruitment'

*This content was translated by AI.

Professional soccer K League 2 Paju Frontier FC had a large striker. Borja Baston, 34, is a striker from Spain. Jesse Lingard (34), a former Manchester United player who previously played for FC Seoul, has an "all-time career" to succeed.

The Paju club officially announced Borja's recruitment on the 4th. Paju succeeded in recruiting the former team, Granada (Spain), as a free agent whose contract was over. The first K-League number was reported to be 92.

Looking back on his career, it is simply a 'surprise recruitment'. Borha is a striker from Atletico Madrid Youth in Spain who has served as a national team under the age of 19 (U-19). He was the top scorer at the 2009 FIFA Under-17 World Cup and also a member of Spain's UEFA Under-21 Championship in 2011.

Since then, he has been loaned to Spain's second-tier teams such as Real Murcia, Uesca, Deportivo La Coruña, and Real Zaragoza. In particular, in the 2014-2015 season, he scored 22 goals in 38 games for Real Zaragoza, ranking second in Spain's second-division scoring. In the following season, he scored 18 goals for Eibar in Spain's Primera Liga (first division), drawing a lot of attention.

He also played on the English Premier League (EPL) stage thanks to this performance. He moved to Swansea City, where Ki Sung-yueng (Pohang Steelers) belonged during the 2016-2017 season. At that time, the transfer fee amounted to 18 million euros (about 30.9 billion won based on Transmarkt). Although he played on loan with Malaga and Alaves after scoring only one goal on the EPL stage, the stage was still the Spanish Primera Liga.

His slow career succeeded in "rebounding" in the 2021-2022 season when he was also a member of Real Ovie. He scored 22 goals in Spain's second division and even had the top scorer title. After that, he scored eight goals in the 2022-2023 season and 10 goals in the 2023-2024 season, respectively, before heading to the K League through Pachuca (Mexico) and Granada. This is his first time on the Asian stage since his debut.

It is evaluated that the ability to provide rights and linked plays using 186 centimeters of height, as well as the ability to directly penetrate the back space of the defense. Even if it was not steady, he is a player who has already proven his goal-scoring ability, as his career of scoring 18 goals in the first part of Spain and ranking second in the second part of Spain shows.

Given that most of his career has been played in big European leagues such as Spain's first and second divisions and the EPL, and that only Spain's second division has a "scoring title," it is not too much to say that it is the best career among foreign players in the K-League. Moreover, not only Paju but also the entire K-League fans are very surprised in that they have K-League 2, not K-League 1, and Paju, a new team.

However, 'anxiety factor' also clearly exists. Regardless of whether or not to adapt to the K-League, questions about the current physical condition itself remain. After his contract with Granada expired in June last year, he could not play in official games because he could not find his team for about nine months. The last official game he played in also remains in May last year. Even if you have maintained your condition through personal training, you may need a considerable amount of time to improve your sense of play again. The fact that he has not scored a single goal in a season while going through Pachuca and Granada in 2024-2025, his most recent season, should also be viewed separately from his "all-time career" in the past.

Nevertheless, if you quickly raise your condition and easily adjust to the unfamiliar K-League stage, you will surely show enough classes. If he can quickly erase variables such as coach Gerard Nuss' tactics and how to use Borja, his performance is also expected due to the relatively higher proportion of foreign players in K League 2. "Borha is a striker who has proven competitiveness in major European leagues, and is a resource that will increase the completeness of the team's attack," said Hwang Koo-chi, head of Paju FC.

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*This content was translated by AI.