Atletico Madrid Striker Borja Baston an Ideal Fit for Swansea or West Brom

Ask most Atletico Madrid fans about May 2010, and they’ll respond with a smile and a knowing nod. It was, after all, when everything started to change.

Diego Forlan’s two goals in the Europa League final against Fulham in Hamburg restored Atleti to the forefront of European football, but at least one fan will tell you about a sad tale in the same week.

Three days after the final, and with the celebrations in the Spanish capital still going, Atletico rounded off a below-par La Liga season with a 3-0 defeat at home to Getafe, a result which ensured that they finished the campaign in ninth place.

But with the Europa League won, no one was too bothered. That was until young forward Borja Baston came on for his first-team debut just before the hour mark.

LLUIS GENE/Getty Images

Three months short of his 18th birthday, Borja—a Madrid native and Atletico fan who had been in the club’s youth system since the age of four—bounded onto the field, eager to make an impression on both the crowd and manager Quique Sanchez Flores.

It was a second-string Atletico side, and Getafe—helped by a brace from Roberto Soldado—were strolling to a win which secured their own participation in the Europa League the following season, but to Borja this was everything. And then it was nothing.

After just 20 minutes on the pitch, a sickening slip saw the 17-year-old rupture the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. What he’d hoped would be a dream debut had turned into a nightmare, and to this day he has never played in another competitive match for Atletico. The signs are that he never will.

According to a report in El Mundo Deportivo (h/t Lewis Winter of the Daily Star), the soon-to-be 24-year-old forward is the subject of interest from Premier League duo Swansea City and West Bromwich Albion, both of whom are far more interested in the six years which followed that unfortunate injury than the injury itself.

Because even if that blow torpedoed any chance that Borja had of making it at his boyhood club, his isn’t a story for which you should get the violins out.

The years that have followed have brought goals at B-team level and in the Spanish lower leagues before 2015/16’s explosion into the Spanish top flight, as Borja scored 18 goals for unfashionable Eibar during the fifth of five loan spells he’s embarked upon away from Atletico.

GERARD JULIEN/Getty Images

Like all players in such a position, though, the time must have come for Borja to realise that his future now demands a permanent move rather than a temporary one.

The signing of Kevin Gameiro from Sevilla and the retaining of Fernando Torres for another year has effectively closed the door on his career at the club, and although Atletico might want to consider another loan deal, it surely is best for all parties to cut the umbilical cord and let Borja forge a career elsewhere.

If it is to be England—or Wales, in Swansea’s case—chances are he’ll prove to be a success.

Standing 6'3", Borja is a physical presence that defenders are going to find it tough to deal with, and he’s a player who certainly knows where the goal is.

He's capable of playing with both his back to goal and running onto balls down the channels. It was the 22 goals he scored in Real Zaragoza’s run to the 2014/15 Segunda Division playoff final which really turned him into a more complete forward, and he rounded off his game with that fine spell at Eibar last season.

WyScout

Following their reprieve from relegation the season before—when Elche were sent down in their place due to financial issues—the tiny club from the Basque Country roared out of the blocks in 2015/16, reaching sixth place by the halfway point of the season, largely thanks to Borja.

A run of six goals in five games between the end of September and October earned him La Liga’s Player of the Month award for the latter month, and he was thriving in a team playing with little to no expectations and a desire to upset the elite.

It was form which prompted ESPN’s Joseph Walker to implore Diego Simeone to bring Borja back to Atletico in late January in the wake of the poor form of Luciano Vietto and the soon-to-be departing Jackson Martinez:

"

Playing regularly, [Borja] has taken to La Liga like a duck to water.

He has racked up 14 league goals thus far this term (almost triple the amount Atleti's three forwards have) and has fired the minnows to sixth in the table. All this aged just 23.

The club must do whatever it takes to get him back as soon as possible. If they have to pay a fine to cancel his loan spell, so be it. If they have to pay a fine to the league for breaching the deal they had agreed, so be it.

"

But Atletico didn’t listen.

Borja stayed at Eibar, and although both his and subsequently the club’s form tailed off towards the end of the season, the primary objective of survival had been secured. He could leave with his head held high.

And he’d have hoped that he’d be leaving for a spell in Atletico’s plans, but alas, that seems as though it is not to be. It will be tough for some supporters to accept the loss of one of their own, but now a move seems inevitable, even if it is one which will surely include the insertion of valuable buyback clauses.

But which of his Premier League suitors would be a better fit? It is possible to make a case for both.

West Bromwich Albion boss Tony Pulis is well-known for his love of tough, physical forwards who can implement his side’s largely rudimentary game plan, and in Borja he would have a player who could do that while also producing no little quality on the ball.

He could be seen as a replacement for the eternally want-away Sadio Berahino, a target for both Crystal Palace and Stoke City, according to the BBC, but the same outlet also reported that West Ham's Diafra Sakho is close to joining the Baggies, who already have Salomon Rondon, Rickie Lambert and exciting youngster Jonathan Leko on the striking staff.

Ben Hoskins/Getty Images

So Swansea could well be the better option, then.

They’ve lost both Bafetimbi Gomis and Alberto Paloschi this summer, and so their need for a top-quality forward is a real one.

Borja would undoubtedly be their main man, something that he’s never been at a club that actually owned him before.

As ever, there would need to be a few cautionary tales when making his way in the Premier League, but Swansea have a habit of polishing rough diamonds, and he’d fit in among a squad packed with potential but always seemingly uncertain.

It could be that both Borja needs the club and the club needs him, as a new chapter in a promising career waits to be written.