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Liverpool striker Divock Origi is celebrating his 21st birthday with Reds fans hoping the Belgian has now got his hands on the key to the door to unlock his potential.

Origi certainly appears to have come of age in football terms this month, netting four times in April alone, with a brace off the bench against Stoke City sandwiched by crucial strikes in both legs against Borussia Dortmund.

The fact that manager Jurgen Klopp chose to start with Origi up front on his much-heralded return to the Westfalenstadion ahead of Daniel Sturridge speaks volumes regarding the youngster’s progress of late as he has developed from being a raw prospect offering potential to a genuine performer.

The past couple of years have been a roller coaster ride for Origi who hails from a large family of footballers.

His father, three uncles and a cousin have all played the game at senior level and Origi was was sounded out by the Kenyan football federation to represent the national team his dad Mike played 120 times for.







However, after some promising displays for his French club Lille towards the end of the 2013/14 season, Belgium coach Marc Wilmots stepped in to include Origi in the World Cup squad of his country of birth.

Uncapped going into finals, he shone in Brazil, becoming Belgium’s youngest World Cup goalscorer against Russia and getting the nod over Romelu Lukaku for the last 16 showdown against the USA.

Suitably impressed, Liverpool’s transfer committee gave the green light to shell out £10million on Origi but immediately loaned him back to Lille to continue his development for a further year.

The Reds’ striking woes that season with Daniel Sturridge sidelined for long periods through injury and a combination of Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert failing to fill the huge void left by Luis Suarez’s departure even led to speculation that Anfield chiefs were willing to pay extra to bring Origi to the club earlier than anticipated during the January transfer window.

The harsh reality though was that across the Channel, the player himself was struggling with fears growing that he was in fact a classic knee-jerk World Cup signing.

Origi suffered the ignominy of being named in L’Equipe’s ‘Ligue 1 Worst XI’ and while hopes remained that he could eventually develop into a star, short term expectations were tempered.

As feared by many, while undoubtedly a game trier, Origi’s finishing looked off the mark during his early months on Merseyside.

He failed to find the net in his first 10 outings for Liverpool but after some steady improvement in his play, Origi hasn’t looked back since breaking his duck in spectacular style with a hat-trick in the 6-1 thrashing of Southampton at St Mary’s in the Capital One Cup back in December.

Origi announced himself on the Premier League stage with a last-gasp equaliser at home to West Bromwich Albion that prompted his manager to lead the players in the now iconic/infamous (depending on your perspective) salute to the Kop while holding hands.

Love continued to be in the air for a Valentine’s Day massacre of Aston Villa as Origi was one of half a dozen Liverpool players to find the net on the same day and the only way has been up during his current purple patch.

An useful option both from the start, bagging the Reds’ first goal home and away against Dortmund, or coming off the bench as his second half brace against Stoke showed, Origi is already blossoming into the kind of striker his manager can place faith in.

He’s now ahead of fellow Belgian international striker and £32.5million purchase Christian Benteke in the scoring charts this season while the decision to select him ahead of Sturridge for both Europa League quarter-final matches shows Klopp’s belief in his abilities.

As well as becoming a more polished performer, Origi is also displaying the kind of strength to cut it in the English game having gone up a shirt size after gaining an extra five kilogrammes of muscle.

Given such dedication, few would argue that he hasn’t earned himself a slice of birthday cake today.