While Liverpool's headline summer business centred on Bradley Barcola's arrival, the Reds also made a smaller splash in Belgium that has quietly reshaped their goalkeeping plans for years to come.
Liverpool have agreed a £30 million deal, add-ons included, for 18-year-old Genk goalkeeper Lucca Brughmans, who is being lined up as Alisson's long-term successor despite the club's earlier investment in Giorgi Mamardashvili. The 6ft 7in Belgian will spend this season on loan back at Genk before moving to Anfield ahead of the 2027-28 campaign.
Even Genk's own hierarchy admits they did not see the offer coming. Head of football Dimitri De Condé told Het Laatste Nieuws he was taken aback when the bid landed.
"My first reaction was: 'Oh boy, what now?'" he said, asked if he had pinched himself. "After all, a team had to take the field just a few days later. But then, seeing how Lucca performed at Anderlecht… And I'm not just talking about those two fantastic saves, but also his presence and his post-match interviews."
De Condé knew Brughmans was attracting attention from Europe's biggest clubs, including a visit to Real Madrid, but insists the scale and speed of Liverpool's move still caught him off guard.
> "I knew he was on the radar of top clubs," he said. "That he'd even visited Real Madrid. And that he was one of the lads we hoped to get a handsome fee for at some point, to ensure the club's survival. But for it to happen that quickly. And for that amount… I never saw that coming."
He was also keen to play down suggestions that he personally engineered the transfer.
"People saying 'It's fantastic what De Condé achieved with his experience regarding Lucca's transfer!'? Sorry, but that's not the case. In the end, I got a call from his agency at 11am on a Sunday, two days before the English transfer window closed," he said. "'Liverpool is serious. This is the offer.' And the very next morning, Lucca was on a plane to Liverpool.
"I do take credit for the fact that we, as a club, chose that path. I don't pick the starting lineup — let's be clear about that — but at a certain point, we gave Lucca his chance. It might have only been in the Play-Off 2 stage, but we did it nonetheless."
Brughmans has started all four of Genk's league games so far this season, having made his senior debut in April, and captains Belgium's under-19s having previously led the country's youth sides at the under-17 European Championship and World Cup.
Whether Genk could have extracted an even bigger fee for their prized asset appears to be beside the point — for a club that had targeted a "handsome" sum simply to aid its own survival, Liverpool's offer was one De Condé was never going to turn down.