Every football club has that story of ‘the one that got away’, be it Alan Shearer at Manchester United, Kylian Mbappe at Arsenal, or even Lionel Messi at Rangers. There are often weird and wonderful tales of how superstars almost signed for different clubs.
However, for Liverpool, this is quite the occurrence.
Indeed, the Reds have missed out on some incredibly high-profile transfer targets in recent years, and with that in mind, we’re going to look at an XI of players that could have signed for Liverpool.
GK: Neto
Alisson is the Reds’ current number one, but there very easily could have been another Brazilian between the sticks for Liverpool.
Indeed, when speaking to RedMen TV last year, goalkeeping coach John Achterberg admitted that Liverpool wanted to sign Neto back in 2015 and the Brazilian even wanted the move.
“We wanted to sign a new goalie to be in competition with Simon and I liked Neto. He wanted to come to us but he could not change it so he didn’t come in the end. He still wanted to come but obviously, it didn’t happen and he’s at Barca now.”
RB: Dani Alves
Still going strong at the age of 38, Dani Alves is a Barcelona legend, but in another world, he’s an Anfield hero.
Back in 2006, Rafa Benitez was eyeing up an £8m move for Alves, and a deal was apparently agreed according to The Athletic, but sadly, a transfer never came to fruition as the Reds’ transfer budget didn’t stretch far enough to sign both the Brazilian and Dirk Kuyt in the same summer.
Luckily, Trent Alexander-Arnold is doing a fine job at right-back these days, and he’d even give a prime Alves a run for his money.
CB: Ruben Dias
Jonathan Woodgate briefly worked for Liverpool as a scout, and he eyed up a teenage Ruben Dias for Liverpool when he was at Benfica.
“I was going over to Spain and Portugal every two weeks and trying to get to four games, one in the morning one at night, and you come back and watch them on the tele and on the laptop,” Woodgate told The Greatest Game Podcast.
“Yeah, Dias I watched him play at Sunderland I think it was for Benfica Under 19s, he was top-drawer.”
Nowadays, Dias is turning out for Liverpool’s biggest rivals, Manchester City, and he’s doing a stellar job at the back for Pep Guardiola’s side.
CB: David Carmo
This time a year ago, Liverpool were going through one of the worst injury crises any club has ever endured at centre-back.
The Reds were in the market for a new defender last summer, and one player who almost signed was David Carmo.
“On the day the market closed, I was looking for replacements because I was convinced that David Carmo would go to Liverpool,” Carlos Carvalhal even said.
LB: Theo Hernandez
Another of Jonathan Woodgate’s finds. The former Middlesbrough manager says that he urged the Reds to sign Theo Hernandez as a youngster.
“I recommended a player who signed for Real Madrid. I absolutely adored him but Liverpool decided they didn’t want him. He’s done OK – he’s at AC Milan now. Theo Hernandez – bombs on for fun, and he’s a machine,” Woodgate told The Greatest Game Podcast.
Now at AC Milan, the Frenchman would have been a great depth option for the Reds at left-back.
CM: Mario Gotze
Just this week, Mario Gotze spoke to The Mail about how he should have joined Liverpool in 2016.
Gotze is, of course, a player Jurgen Klopp knows well from his time at Borussia Dortmund, and according to Gotze, he could have joined the Reds.
“We are still in touch and we spoke back then about me coming to Liverpool,” Gotze said.
“But I wasn’t in a state of mind where I could consider it, that’s why it didn’t happen.
‘Do I regret it? It’s always difficult to look back but if you ask me now then yeah, I should have joined Liverpool for sure. I just made a wrong decision but it’s not a regret.”
CM: Nabil Fekir
This is about as close as any transfer gets without being completed.
According to Fekir’s agent, the Frenchman had even posed in a Liverpool shirt, but at the eleventh hour back in 2018, the plug was pulled on the deal.
According to some sources, Fekir failed his medical due to a knee issue, but the player himself denies that story. What truly happened here remains something of a mystery.
CM: Dele Alli
Brendan Rodgers spoke about almost signing Alli on Goals on Sunday back in 2017.
“We thought we had him at Liverpool,” Rodgers said.
“The manager of MK Dons actually drove him down to us. They played a game on the Saturday and we were playing West Ham on the Sunday.”
“I spent a couple of hours in a hotel room with him and he wanted to come to Liverpool. It was all about getting the deal done with the club but unfortunately it never got done.”
Nowadays, Alli is playing for the Reds’ Merseyside rivals Everton where his career continues to falter.
RW: Gareth Bale
According to The Athletic, Liverpool accidentally stumbled across Bale as a 16-year-old while they were trying to scout David McGoldrick.
“We went back and said, ‘McGoldrick isn’t for us but there’s this 16-year-old kid called Gareth Bale we should sign,” One scout told The Athletic.
“No one was really talking about Bale back then. Southampton weren’t convinced themselves and he had only just earned himself a scholarship there.”
Unfortunately, the Reds never closed a deal for the winger who would go on to become the most expensive footballer on the planet in 2013.
LW: Alexis Sanchez
Another of Brendan Rodgers’ failed signings. The Northern Irishman truly thought he’d land Sanchez as his Luis Suarez replacement in 2014
“The huge blow was that we thought we were getting Alexis Sanchez and that he’d be a like-for-like replacement in terms of how he pressed the game, his aggression. We thought he’d be perfect, it’d be a smooth transition and Rickie Lambert would come in and be an option if we needed something else in the game. But we didn’t get Alexis Sanchez and, bless Rickie, there was a lot of pressure on him when really that wasn’t the plan,” Rodgers told Sky Sports.
Liverpool thought they were landing Sanchez, but they ended up with Rickie Lambert – talk about a bad trade-off.
ST: Cristiano Ronaldo
Is there a club in England that wasn’t after a teenage Cristiano Ronaldo in the early 2000s?
It seems as though every Premier League team at that time thought they were signing the man who would go on to be known as CR7, but eventually, he would end up at Manchester United.
According to Phil Thompson, Liverpool had sounded out a deal for Ronaldo just weeks before he made that fateful move to Old Trafford. The rest, as they say, is history.
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