Report: Liverpool have made their first bid to sign ‘excellent’ player but it’s already been rejected

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Liverpool have made a big bid to Benfica for World Cup winning midfielder Enzo Fernandez.

That’s according to CM Jornal, who claim that Liverpool’s opening offer has already been rejected out of hand.

The offer, which is said to be in the region of £88m, was reportedly made only yesterday. However, it’s claimed to fall around £20m short of Benfica’s valuation. The Portuguese giants will reportedly hold out for Fernandez’s release clause to be paid in full.

Should Liverpool match this valuation, they’ll end up paying around £106m. That would make the 21-year-old their record signing by some £30m. Let’s see what Liverpool’s next move is.

Conflicting reports from Portugal

A report from Record on Thursday morning claimed that a ‘mystery club’ had submitted a bid for Fernandez. These reports made it clear that the offer hadn’t come from Anfield, though.

Now, CM Jornal are claiming the exact opposite of this.

So, who do we believe? Well, call us excitable, but we’ve always been more CM Jornal kind of guys ourselves!

I suppose either way, it isn’t necessarily good news for Liverpool. But if it really was another club making an offer for the Argentinian, then that would obviously confirm that the Reds have big competition for his signature.

At least if it were Liverpool making the offer, then we know that Jurgen Klopp has the intention of signing Fernandez.

£88m is not an insignificant bid, either. Considering that Enzo has barely four months of European football under his belt for Benfica, some would say that it’s something of a crazy bid. But given what we saw at the World Cup, Fernandez could be worth it. Even before that, he’d been described as ‘excellent’ by Benfica boss Roger Schmidt.

This was likely just an opening offer from whoever the mystery bidder was. There isn’t a huge gap between the bid and Fernandez’s release clause, anyway.

We know that Benfica are always willing to do business for the right price. There’s plenty of room, and time, for negotiation here.

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