Liverpool’s summer has been shaped by one stubborn absence.
Mohamed Salah has gone, Andoni Iraola has stated plainly that nobody should be asked to replace him outright, and the list of wide forwards linked with Anfield keeps growing without anyone arriving to take ownership of the right flank.
UK ONLY
Victor Munoz is through the door, but Richard Hughes is not finished.
On Saturday afternoon in Sweden, one of the names on that list made his case in front of a global audience.
Ibrahim Mbaye needed 120 seconds to put Paris Saint Germain ahead against Manchester United at the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg.
Dro Fernandez worked space on the left, Ayden Heaven could not cut out the low cross, and the teenager arrived unmarked at the far post to turn it in.
It was the kind of goal that says very little about technique and a great deal about timing, movement and the willingness to gamble on a ball that might never arrive.
United recovered.
Amad Diallo robbed Axel Koukaba on the half hour and slipped in Bryan Mbeumo, who picked out the bottom corner to level the match, and Michael Carrick’s side spent most of the afternoon testing Matvey Safonov thereafter.
But Mbaye had already delivered his line.
The interest in him is real.
Sky Sports reported this week that Liverpool have explored the conditions of a deal, with the player believed to be receptive to Anfield.
Fabrice Hawkins first revealed the push, while Fabrizio Romano has since confirmed contact with Jorge Mendes, the agent recently appointed to handle any exit, and described Liverpool as leading a race that also features Bayer Leverkusen, RB Leipzig and Eintracht Frankfurt.
PSG are understood to want somewhere near €50million.
That figure matters.
Bradley Barcola remains the marquee pursuit, but a valuation around £145million has stalled it, and Mbaye is being treated as a separate conversation rather than a consolation prize.
At 18 he is already 42 appearances into a PSG career that began at 16, and in the summer he became the youngest African to score at a World Cup, in Senegal’s defeat to France.
The caution is obvious.
Three goals and two assists across a Ligue 1 season is a modest return, and Iraola has said his next winger must have shown a good level already.
Liverpool are not a club with the room to develop a project player in public.
Yet the profile fits in a way Barcola’s arguably does not.
Mbaye is a natural on the right, he presses with genuine appetite, he attacks the box rather than drifting around it, and his frustration in Paris stems from competition rather than form.
Gothenburg was only a friendly.
It was also a reminder of why the phone calls started.