Claims from Italy suggest that Napoli CEO Aurelio De Laurentiis has been regularly making contact with Liverpool to sign Darwin Nunez.
The striker is on the market this summer with Liverpool ready to cut their significant losses on the £64m plus undisclosed bonus payments for Nunez after just three years on Merseyside.
It really is in the best interest of all parties to go their seperate ways even if there is the sense that there is a lot of untapped potential in Nunez.
With 40 goals and 26 assists in 143 games, Nunez hasn’t been a total failure but despite threatening to find consistency but ultimately failing, Liverpool are selling him this summer to to make way for reported plans to sign an elite No.9 to replace him.
De Laurentiis has reportedly been bombarding Liverpool with requests to decrease the asking price of £43m
According to a report from Italian newspaperr La Gazzetta Dello Sport, Liverpool “focused” on recruiting Nunez this summer to the extent that Napoli CEO Aurelio De Laurentiis is said to be regularly contacting Liverpool with requests to lower their £43m asking price.
Perhaps Liverpool’s biggest challenge outside winning the battle to sign Florian Wirtz is their objective to maximise possible return on selling Nunez to both fund his replacement and soften the massive blow of losing him for at least £21m less than he was signed for in 2022.
If the fanciful rumours doing the rounds that Liverpool remain keen to sign Alexander Isak despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them in that regard are true, the Reds will need to be willing to spend even more than they spent to sign Wirtz to get the Swedish striker.
Convincing buying clubs to spend big on Nunez is a tough sell when it has been clear for at least 18 months that he was never going to develop into the player Liverpool need him to be is a tough sell.
That said, he is not a terrible player as some have suggested. He simply isn’t a refined striker but he creates loads of chances with his runs and general chaos-first approach.
This season, despite being on the fringes and often out the squad, the Uruguayan managed seven goals and seven assists.
From 2,000 minutes, that’s not good enough. But in a system that suits him, like a club that relies on forwards to create space after sitting in a low block- like Victor Osimhen recently – he suits a team like Napoli down to a tee.
Liverpool need to remain strong on their asking price otherwise it makes dreams of landing a top striker even more fanciful given the massive transfer outlay already this summer.