Liam Bonetig is a 20-year-old centre-back who plays for Melbourne City in the A-League. Bonetig was previously on the books of Celtic, where he made 19 appearances for their B team. This season, he has returned to Australia and played at least a part in most of City’s games. Bonetig has 8 appearances for Australia U-20. He was part of Australia’s squad at the most recent U-20 World Cup but did not make an appearance.
Bonetig is listed at 6’3″ (1.90 m). He isn’t particularly muscular, but he is quite broad, so I think there is a good chance he will fill out more in the next couple of years. Bonetig is quite comfortable on the ball. What really sets him apart is his ball-carrying ability. Bonetig often receives the ball and drives forward out of the back with it. This can pull opposition players out of position and open up passing lanes for him. Obviously, dribbling from the centre-back position carries some risk. But Bonetig is hard to knock off the ball and dribbles well enough that he can get the best of most opposition attacking players. Bonetig is generally a good passer, though he has some areas for improvement. He consistently breaks lines with his passing. However, sometimes he puts the teammate on the receiving end of that line-breaking pass in trouble because he overhits it, or the player in question is tightly marked. Bonetig’s long-range passing was generally inaccurate in the games I watched.
Bonetig is generally quite strong defensively. His size makes him proficient in physical battles and in the air. That said, in situations where he needs to move his feet to attack the ball, he can have some problems. For example, if he is standing around the penalty spot when a cross is played to the top of the 18-yard box, he tends to struggle to get there. He also didn’t deal with bounces or deflections that well in the games I watched. There were multiple times when a ball just bounced over his head. His positioning relative to the other defenders is also occasionally a little off, creating gaps that the opposition can exploit. He makes up for some of these shortcomings by being relatively quick for a centre-back. I was impressed by his ability to recover when opposition strikers initially got the better of him with a touch or a dribble.
I can see why Bonetig wasn’t able to break into the Celtic first team. But he is young, strong in possession, and has a great physical profile. So I think it is a reasonable bet that he will eventually go on to bigger things than the A-League. A solid career for an upper mid-table club somewhere in the North Atlantic seems likely.
Target Scouting 