Conflicting Reports Over Liverpool Signing of Ghanaian Starlet Abdul Fatawu Issahaku

Liverpool FC have spent the last couple of years making aggressive moves to bring in top-tier young talent into their Academy. Michael Edwards and co have spent relatively large sums of money for youth players to bring in the likes of Harvey Elliott, Mateusz Musialowski, Marcelo Pitaluga, and Kaide Gordon.

With transfer fees for top-tier first team talent climbing ever upward, Liverpool seem likely to continue the trend of snapping up young talent while they are still affordable. It would make sense, then, that Ghanaian Starlet Abdul Fatawu Issahaku would be on Liverpool’s radar.

The 17 year old attacking player has already featured 19 times for Ghanaian club Steadfast FC of Ghana’s second division. He was also the star for Ghana’s U20 team that won the most recent Africa Cup of Nations, scoring tow goals garnering MVP honors. He also was called up to the senior national team in March, but didn’t make an appearance.

Earlier this summer, it was reported that Bayer Leverkusen were on the brink of signing Fatawu ahead of a bevy of interested clubs from around Europe. It seems, however, that Liverpool have pipped Bayer Leverkusen for his signature.

Earlier this week, Steadfast FC club president Haruna Iddrisu, stated that his club has agreed to a fee of £1.5m for Liverpool to sign Fatawu. The report from Football Ghana also states that the player will immediately be sent out on loan to Sporting Lisbon since the player is unlikely to qualify for a work permit.

So this is where things get fun. In late May, the Liverpool Echo reported that Liverpool were, in fact, not looking to make a deal with Fatawu, and Sporting Lisbon and Sevilla were the two most likely destinations for the player. Several media outlets have published Liverpool have signed the player in the last couple of days, but they are all basically just some version of the report from Football Ghana from June 17 (some even manage to cite the publication).

While many publications are saying Liverpool have signed the player, there have been no announcements from the club or from any club connected journalists to this point. There is also a conflicting report from Record in Portugal (via HITC) saying that Sporting Lisbon B have signed the player on a permanent deal rather than Liverpool.

So, for now, it is still unclear as to whether a deal has been done to make Fatawu a Liverpool player. Don’t you just love transfer season?