If Shinji Kagawa’s name excites merchandising experts tasked with selling a Manchester United code via Asia, his football reminds fans that, during a best, a diversion is some-more about art than science. “The character of this sharp-witted actor is suggestive of a rope essay of calligraphers,” is how one German publisher described Sir Alex Ferguson’s new aggressive midfield buy from Borussia Dortmund.

As United’s manager starts his annual summer holiday in a south of France he might simulate that calligraphy derives from a Greek difference kallos and graphe. Meaning “beautiful writing”, it is a form of countenance dictated to residence a heart as many as a eyes.

Ferguson can usually trust that Kagawa is able of joining his team’s midfield and conflict in likewise bewitching fashion. Although it would be an deceit to contend that United’s diversion incited one- or even two-dimensional final deteriorate their play positively mislaid some of a gloriously mottled positional interchanging seen in a days when Cristiano Ronaldo was in his Old Trafford resplendence and advancing age had not forced Paul Scholes to stay utterly so deep.

Too fugitive and pointed a talent to be simply categorised, a fifth Japanese actor to try his fitness in a Premier League can't be compartmentalised as possibly a new Ronaldo or a new Scholes. What a 23-year-old many positively offers his teams is a refusal to consider in true lines. Blessed with a singular ability to feat areas of disadvantage among antithesis midfields and defences, Kagawa operates cleverly between those lines. Equally gentle deployed far-reaching on a left or right, mainly or invited to ramble free, he has been described as a superior, some-more guileful and versatile chronicle of Freddie Ljungberg in his Arsenal prime.

Since Mario Götze’s hip damage partway by final season, Ferguson and his scouts have frequently seen a male constantly fielded far-reaching on a left by Japan do a playmaking purpose for Dortmund. While such coherence evidently appeals, reports in Tokyo prove that Kagawa was offering a brief as a executive block behind Wayne Rooney in a 4-2-3-1 arrangement when he met United’s manager to finalise his switch from a double Bundesliga champions.

“Sir Alex Ferguson has finished his task again,” tweeted Jan Aage Fjortoft, a former Middlesbrough and Norway striker, who is a heading pundit in Germany. “Kagawa can be a strike during Manchester United.”

If Fjortoft envisages Kagawa providing United’s strikers with a turbo-charged chronicle of a use that a deep-lying Nick Barmby once offering him on Teesside, Rooney might find to detect shades of his prolonged station hero, Jari Litmanen, in a new boy. Kagawa is quick, explosively energetic and good capable in a high-intensity dire diversion that brought Borussia Dortmund dual titles during his dual years in Germany. In reality, not a complicated Litmanenesque playmaker though one that arguably appears improved matched to English football.

His vision, cunning and eye for idea – he scored 17 times for Dortmund in all competitions final deteriorate while formulating several some-more – guarantee to pierce out a best in not usually Rooney though Ashley Young, Antonio Valencia and maybe even Nani. Not to discuss enhancing United’s ability for competition confounding positional rotation.

It helps that an particular with a gusto for violation adult a one and dual touch, pass-and-move things by irregularly using during massed opponents with a round during his feet is about some-more many some-more than imagination footwork. “I was innate in 1989, a Japanese year of a snake,” Kagawa once said. “People innate underneath a lizard are really driven, hatred disaster and don’t mind hardship.”

Despite unwell to master German, Dortmund’s artistic matter was frequently praised for his intelligence, regard and piety and coped good with a critical feet damage that disrupted his initial Bundesliga campaign. Such qualities guarantee to offer him good in a reduction egalitarian, significantly aloft paid, rather some-more precious, English habitat.

Perhaps it helps that a child from Kobe, whose father worked on a Kinki Nippon Railway, gifted a delayed commencement to life as a veteran footballer. Having arrived from Cerezo Osaka in J-League 2, his £294,000 pierce to Dortmund primarily captivated dismissive headlines. Such opinions were quickly revised when reporters started purgation about a male who played “like an angel” and was quick apropos “the valuables in Borussia’s crown”.

With United staid to deposition adult to £17m into their coffers few during Dortmund now acknowledge to querying a knowledge of usurpation Thomas Kroth’s recommendation to partisan a worryingly slight figure from an different Japanese club. Kroth, a late Dortmund actor incited agent, speckled Kagawa during Osaka, sealed him adult and vowed to emanate not usually a European domicile name though a universe star. Ferguson contingency trust a second partial of that goal will be achieved during Old Trafford.