Naby Keita: Liverpool willing to pay club record fee for Leipzig midfielder
Last updated on .From the section Football
Liverpool are willing to pay a club record fee to bring RB Leipzig midfielder Naby Keita to Anfield.
Leipzig insist the 22-year-old Guinea international will not be sold this summer after they qualified for this season's Champions League.
Keita has been touted as having a £70m price tag, although he has a £48m release clause in his contract that can be unlocked next summer.
Liverpool are yet to bid for Keita, who scored eight league goals last season.
However, manager Jurgen Klopp is a huge admirer and the Anfield hierarchy look certain to test Leipzig's determination to keep someone who has been a central figure in their success with a firm offer.
It also remains to be seen whether Keita himself is attracted by a move to the Premier League.
If Klopp, who returns to the club's Melwood training headquarters to start pre-season preparations next week, and Liverpool do make their interest concrete, the fee involved will have to be well in excess of the £34m (39 euros) recently paid to Roma for Mohamed Salah and the £35m it took to sign Andy Carroll from Newcastle United in January 2011.
Liverpool's owner Fenway Sports Group is determined to back Klopp in the market after he took them back into the Champions League - although they have to get past a play-off first.
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No offer has been made, the club aren't selling....... absolute non story.
Loserpool Getting overshadowed by EFC transfer's so Mc Nugget has to write an article on Loserpool
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McNulty is an Evertonian.
Loserpool? Really? Is that the best you can come up with?
You know you have to be aged 14 and over to post here and have an IQ larger than your shoe size.
Failed on both counts, I'd say.
"I haven't seen one player worth the money" - err, Ronaldo? Both in terms of success and marketing value.
"The money could build a school or hospital" - ok then, donate your sky bill, season ticket and shirt money to the NHS. What? You don't want to? Oh. Ruins that point then.
If you want it to stop, stop financing the game.
They have the perfect model, develop excellent youth talent on a budget then sell them to stupid foreign owned clubs who know nothing about football and don't care about the cash.. Then take that money and re-invest it back into your club and do it all again infinitum..
@19 I think it will keep going like this, until something happens to the tv money. If that goes pop, we won't be talking about one or two clubs going to the wall, it could be all of them!
The amount of players Man U have been linked with would put them at a summer spending of £1billion.
If LIV would pay £70m for him then Klopp is losing it.
I thought extra TV money would mean top 6 would be signing best players in the world but instead they are linked woth unknowns for double what they are worth.. over inflated bull