The player’s career could’ve looked very different had Jurgen Klopp got his way back in 2017.
It has been widely documented that Jurgen Klopp wasn’t initially a fan of the signing of Mohamed Salah for Liverpool.
The German feared that the Egyptian winger would not fit the Premier League again after his failed stint at Chelsea and that he did not have the physical attributes to compete in England’s top-flight.
Data was presented to Jurgen Klopp that proved Salah to be the current best young wide forward in Europe and the Liverpool boss eventually agreed to the transfer.
Speaking on The Overlap in 2024, Jamie Carragher reaffirmed this fact, saying:
“A really interesting one is Mo Salah and Jurgen Klopp is quite open about this. He didn’t want to sign Mo Salah, he wanted to sign Julian Brandt and Liverpool had tried to sign Salah when he was at Chelsea, so the people behind the scenes were still there.”
“Salah then went to Roma, and they were very adamant that ‘No, we have to sign this player.’ And then you look at what Mo Salah has done. It can easily go the other way, but I do feel that this idea that manager should just buy a player; I don’t think it’s right.”
Carragher mentioned there how Julian Brandt was Jurgen Klopp’s ideal target to fill that attacking area of the pitch that summer.
Julian Brandt has played for Borussia Dortmund since 2019, racking up 208 appearances and scoring 42 goals.
The Bundesliga side’s sporting director Lars Ricken has now confirmed that the player will leave the club on a free transfer when his contract expires at the end of the season.
As seen on the Bundesliga website, Rickens told Sky Germany:
“There have been open discussions, after which we agreed that the expiring contract would not be extended. He played a few hundred games for Borussia Dortmund. I think we can only be grateful to him; he played for us for seven years.”
Julian Brandt could’ve ended up in Liverpool if the club had gone with Jurgen Klopp’s wishes back in the summer of 2017, paving a very different career path for the German international.
It would be fair to assume that the loss isn’t felt too heavily on Merseyside however, as Mohamed Salah has developed into one of the best signings in the history of the football club.
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