Premier League giants Liverpool have joined the race to sign Nantes winger Randal Kolo Muani with the fleet-footed forward on his way out of the Ligue 1 club, as reported by BILD.
Any lingering hopes Liverpool fans might have had of seeing Kylian Mbappe swap Paris for Merseyside appear to have gone up in a cloud of smoke with the World Cup winner packing his sun hat and dusting off his Spanish dictionary.
But while Jurgen Klopp looks set to miss out on the real Mbappe, he could still snap up a man who just cannot escape comparisons with arguably Europe’s finest footballer.
A consolation prize maybe but a prize nonetheless.
Muani, like Mbappe, grew up in the Paris suburb of Bondy.
And while he might not have exploded onto the French football scene as dramatically as the one-time Monaco talisman, Muani is the biggest reason why Nantes are still a top-flight team in January 2022.
The former France U21 international scored the decisive goal – his tenth of the season – as Nantes defeated Toulouse in last term’s relegation play-off.
Will Kolo Muani join Liverpool or Tottenham?
PSG paid a staggering £160 million to lure Mbappe away from Monaco in 2017. Nantes, however, can only dream of earning a tenth of that fee for their twinkle-toed talisman.
“Yes, it is my last season in Nantes,” Muani, who will be a free-agent in the summer, told FootMercato back in December.
“I haven’t made a specific decision yet (about which club I want to join). I’m trying to end the season calmly, and then I’ll try to think about it later.”
It was reported before Christmas that Tottenham Hotspur have shown an interest in Muani, entering talks with the jet-heeled forward (FM).
According to BILD, Antonio Conte will have to go head-to-head with Klopp for the 23-year-old’s signature, however, now that Liverpool have joined the race.
Muani is, in many ways, a typical Liverpool signing; young, affordable and boasting potential by the bucketload.
Klopp has a remarkable track record when it comes to transforming talented, up-and-coming forwards into world-class operators, as Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, Diogo Jota, Roberto Firmino, Robert Lewandowski will attest to.
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