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It had been a quiet transfer window for Liverpool, with Jürgen Klopp’s defending champion Reds only moving to shore up the fullback position with the signing of Kostas Tsimikas.
Some fans were worried the club were letting slip a golden opportunity. Others felt they were wisely biding their time and pushing for good deals in a market unsettled by the coronavirus pandemic.
Today, they moved, agreeing a fee of £20M up front with an additional £5M in add-ons to sign one of football’s best midfielders, 29-year-old Thiago Alcantara, from Bayern Munich.
“I can confirm that Bayern and Liverpool have an agreement, . It was the wish of Thiago at the end of his career to do something new,” Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge confirmed today when asked about reports of a done deal by Bild.
The earliest reports of Liverpool interest in Thiago came with talk that Bayern wanted in excess of £30M for the player. Eventually, that dropped to £27M. In the end, the German giants came down even further.
Faced with the choice of losing Thiago for nothing next summer and selling him for something now, they sold, and with it a Liverpool side that is by any measure one of Europe’s three best is now stronger.