Liverpool have identified Leroy Sane as Mohamed Salah’s perfect replacement and are ready to smash their transfer record to land the Bayern Munich star.
The Reds signed Darwin Nunez in a club-record £80m deal from Benfica in 2022 and are willing to go beyond that fee in order to sign Leroy Sane, who is also attracting interest from Real Madrid. But Jurgen Klopp is an admirer of the former Manchester City winger and wants to bring him back to the Premier League.
Sane, 27, has enjoyed a sparkling start to the 2023/24 season with seven goals in 11 games. The Germany international won’t come cheap as he has a contract with Bayern Munich until 2025. Still, with Mohamed Salah almost certain to leave for the Saudi Pro League next summer, Liverpool will reportedly have the cash to go all out for Sane next year. The Merseyside club rejected a £150m bid from Al-Ittihad for Salah just before the summer transfer deadline, but won’t stand in his way in the summer of 2024 if he decides to leave Anfield.
Jurgen Klopp was happy that he was able to keep hold of Salah in August but knows that his star Egyptian winger is unlikely to resist the lure of playing in the cash-rich Saudi Pro League next summer.
Liverpool planning to replace Salah with Sane
Mohamed Salah has been Liverpool’s talisman under Jurgen Klopp and will be a huge miss should he part company with the club, having registered 192 goals and 83 assists in 315 games—including 10-goal contributions so far this term. However, the Reds expect to lose the Egypt international at the end of the season given the size of interest from the Middle East, and Bayern’s Leroy Sane has already been lined up as his replacement.
Sane is in his fourth season with Bayern after joining for £55million from Manchester City in July 2020. He has established himself as a key player over the last three years, recording 45 goals and 37 assists in 144 appearances for Bayern across all competitions and lifting seven trophies.
The German’s exploits with the Bavarian giants haven’t gone unnoticed, with Klopp looking to lure him back to the Premier League. However, it will be difficult with the 27-year-old arguably playing his best football in a Bayern shirt at the moment. Sane has instantly struck up a strong partnership with summer signing Harry Kane in the final third, which has made Bayern more potent in attack.
Having become a key cog in Thomas Tuchel’s system, Bayern’s next step will be to tie Sane down to a new contract amid reported interest from elsewhere. Considering the wide forward’s exploits with Man City in the past and his current form at Bayern, it’s no surprise Klopp has identified him as a potential successor to Salah.
I am Rohan Sengupta from one of the busiest cities in India, Mumbai. A Journalism graduate with a keen interest in sports, football is something I simply cannot live without and writing, discussing and analyzing the game is what I do 24*7.