Liverpool are right not to buy Bellingham – new targets always emerge
Much anguish at the end of Liverpool's interest in Jude Bellingham, the club having walked solemnly from the card table, now that the 2023 price for England's great young talent has been disclosed.
The fee which Borussia Dortmund are reliably understood to seek is €150 million, contingent of course on the wishes of the young man himself, and a market emerging. He might yet stay in Germany another year, in which case, perhaps it might be a different story next summer if Liverpool's owners Fenway Sports Group has a new minority investor. Although the picture will also be different for competitors too.
Jurgen Klopp has accepted the outcome with some grace, declining – as always – to blame FSG. Jamie Carragher feels differently, describing in this publication as misleading the notion that Liverpool have only just realised that the Bellingham fee is too great relative to the total spending at their disposal for the rebuild. He says that the decline of the team's midfield has been addressed too late and comes after signings, notably Cody Gakpo, that did not need to be prioritised.
The problem for Liverpool is that the Bellingham fee has simply grown too big, too quickly; his World Cup performances, and his general development too swift. Enzo Fernandez's £105 million fee is a new benchmark to which Dortmund will point when they do at last negotiate the sale of their English wunderkind. Another will be the €140 million deal they agreed with Barcelona six years earlier for Ousmane Dembele.
This is a prodigiously talented footballer who might well become a dominant figure of the next decade, and perhaps all that might have been predicted last summer. Yet last summer Bellingham was not for sale.
Then Dortmund were selling Erling Haaland to Manchester City and the Englishman was not available. Bellingham was valued at €80 million then, but it was not a number that could be tested because no negotiation was being entertained. Liverpool were trying to sign the Monaco midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni, for whom the whole package of fee, wages and the rest, was more competitive. The deal was on until Kylian Mbappe renewed his contract with Paris St-Germain and then Real Madrid, excluded from that deal, came for Tchouameni.
This feels like the pivotal point of the argument against the strategy Liverpool have pursued. At that point why did they not sign an alternative midfielder to Tchouameni who could propel them forward, maintain their Champions League status another year and land them in the summer of 2023 at pole on the grid for Bellingham? The problem was that there was no Tchouameni alternative. There were other midfielders, but none nearly as good as the young Frenchman, since then a World Cup final starter and with 36 games for Real.
Liverpool's approach since the recruitment successes of Virgil Van Dijk and Alisson has been to go for the first choice or, failing that, wait for a new first choice to emerge. It is an imperfect strategy but no less imperfect than many others in elite recruitment, where one wrong move can undermine the system. Having spent around £200 million in the last 14 months on Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Fabio Carvalho and Gakpo, one can make the argument that Liverpool should have prioritised midfield. A harder argument is that they should sign midfielders their recruitment analysis considers lower than the standard required.
New first choices do emerge, and surely will do for every club that does not sign Bellingham. The market is threatening to leave all but a few behind. Whatever the misgivings, the interest of state-owned clubs like City, and PSG, as well as Real Madrid, Chelsea and possibly Manchester United has its own inflationary pressures.
The best player in the market was always a tough stretch for Liverpool, even in the days when they were the kings of English football and record transfer fees were only edging into seven figures. They were contenders, in 1981, to acquire Bryan Robson, then a little older than Bellingham is now but no less impactful. Robson went to United in October. That same year Ronnie Whelan finally made his Liverpool debut, Steve Nicol arrived to wait for his chance, and Ian Rush scored his first goal for the club.
Difficult comparisons to make across eras, although the notion that there will only ever be one player who will unlock a club's potential cannot possibly hold true. No serious recruitment can work that way, and now Tchouameni has gone, and possibly Bellingham too, the challenge for all who miss out is to find the next one.
The 1996 FA Youth Cup final won by Liverpool over two legs against West Ham featured Carragher, Michael Owen, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand, the latter of whom would attract continued interest from Anfield. When Ferdinand first became available in 2000, and then two years later, as Leeds United disintegrated, Liverpool were priced out both times. As it turned out, the less expensive signings from 1999 onwards, the likes of Vladimir Smicer, Sami Hyypia and Dietmar Hamann – as well as a certain homegrown full-back who matured splendidly into a converted centre-half – were part of the team that conquered Europe in 2005.
No-one is sure where Bellingham himself wants to go. Much was read into his World Cup friendship with Trent Alexander-Arnold, but it seems Aaron Ramsdale might well be his closest England team-mate and none think he will end up at Arsenal. Not yet, anyway. The Bellingham camp themselves have kept it all a very close secret. There will be lots of clubs who would like to sign Bellingham but do not do so. The only thing that might make the disappointment greater is to sign the wrong players instead.
