Liverpool can now view Frenkie de Jong as a very real possibility for January. Barcelona entered a nightmare situation last night.
ESPN claimed last week that Liverpool have eyes on Frenkie de Jong. They’ve made contact, in fact, and view him as a potential signing – six months after Manchester United thought the same. It’s worth noting that Sport in Spain claim similar.
Liverpool, of course, need a midfielder. The Reds look weak through the middle and there’s little doubt that De Jong would be an injection of quality there.
But what’s changed? No one could get him in the summer so why January? Events last night changed some things.
Frenkie de Jong in January
As you might have heard, Barcelona crashed out of the Champions League last night. Inter qualified earlier in the day with victory over Viktoria Plzen, meaning the Catalonians were only playing for dignity against Bayern Munich.
They couldn’t even earn that. Bayern crushed them 3-0 with relative ease, firmly putting Barca on their place. They’ll now move into the Europa League – a disaster.
Barcelona infamously have more debt that you can fathom. Or at least, they did. They still have an absolute mountain of it but president Joan Laporta made a series of moves in the summer to ease things. The team needed a major refresh and failing to do so would see Barcelona plummet, worsening the debt.
Thus the ‘smart’ thing to do – or at least, as Barca saw it – was to mortgage the club’s future by selling long-term profit for instant cash. They essentially cut their future earnings by promising large portions of it to others. It does make some sense. Failure to act would mean those earnings weren’t worth much anyway.
Investing in the squad now and ‘guaranteeing’ those future earnings was worth losing a big portion of them. At least those earnings would be there. Only, there was no guarantee.
Barcelona didn’t build a squad capable of getting out of their Champions League group, costing them millions this season. They still need to pay back the loans they took out but that’s now a lot more difficult.
(It’s a complex situation and this may be a clumsy explanation. This explains things in a more detailed way.)
Which is where De Jong comes in. Barcelona need cash to make up for their Champions League failure and the easiest way to do that, by far, is selling players. De Jong might be their easiest asset to sell, given he’s worth quite a bit, plays in an area where they have young quality already and there’s demand.
If Liverpool really do want the Dutchman – labelled ‘extraordinary’ by Xavi – we think they can get him. And what a signing he’d be.
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