Mane, Salah and now Diaz? How Liverpool have a tried and tested plan for signing stars
Stefan Bienkowski
- 4 Feb 2022 13:13 GMT
- 5 min read
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp struggled to hide his excitement when he was asked about new signing Luis Diaz on Friday afternoon.
"He is an exceptional player. He has speed, the skillset and the character to have a really good career and we want him to have that career with us,” said the Anfield boss.
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"Nowadays when you have 16 and 17-year-olds playing at the highest level, he maybe is a bit of a late bloomer but they bloom exceptionally well very often.
"I'm really happy we could get him in now. It's a special story so far. We have some players with special stories behind them and I like that. He is one of us now."
Indeed, Klopp has every right to be excited about Diaz. Not only has he shown how exceptionally talented he is from his time at Porto, but he also fits right into Liverpool’s winning formula for signing key players.
The Liverpool age limit for big transfers
Although Klopp described Diaz as something of a late bloomer in the game, the Colombian winger fits perfectly into the club’s profile of players that they like to spend big on.
Indeed, Diaz is the fourteenth player Liverpool have spent at least €20 million or more on since Klopp became manager and there’s certainly a trend beginning to emerge with the club’s transfer dealings.
Intriguingly, at 25 years of age, Diaz also fits into a very clear age profile that Liverpool are clearly trying to stick to when they identify potential stars for the first team.
Of the 14 aforementioned players that Liverpool have spent huge sums on, only two have arrived at the club over the age of 25. And one of them was Virgil Van Dijk, who arrived a full year after the club began an aggressive approach to sign him.
So far, Thiago Alcantara has been the only expensive signing made with considerably more experience than the rest, having joined from Bayern Munich at the age of 29.
