Newcastle United will reportedly bid £9m in an attempt to bring former Dortmund defender Gunter to the Premier League from Hellas Verona.
Jurgen Klopp doesn’t often get it wrong.
In a decade of management at the top level, Robert Lewandowski, Mario Gotze, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Sadio Mane, Marco Reus, Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino and many, many more have been transformed into some of the world’s best under the guidance of the bespectacled, bearded German.
And Koray Gunter, at the age of 25, is desperately trying to prove that Klopp was not totally wide of the mark all those years ago.
“There’s a reason I didn’t want to sign a defender after the (Neven) Subotic injury: Koray Günter!,” Klopp told FourFourTwo when he was still kitted out in that luminous Dortmund tracksuit.
“He has an unbelievable ability in an athletic sense, good technique, very fast, a very good leap. He doesn’t play in the first XI just because we need to work a little more in terms of concentration.
“Other than that, Koray is a great talent. He will be one of the best stoppers in the world in the coming years and he plays in the right club to achieve this.”
For all Klopp’s praise, Gunter was never trusted to start a Bundesliga game in the famous Schwarzgelben shirt. An 89th minute cameo in a 2-0 defeat to Borussia Monchengladbach in 2013 was as close as he came to the first team before he was sold to Galatasaray.
But Gunter is certainly making up for lost time now. According to Calciomercato, Newcastle United were so impressed after watching the centre-back in Hellas Verona’s 0-0 draw with Udinese on Tuesday that they are preparing an offer of £9 million to bring the German to St James’ Park in January.
What better place than the Premier League for Gunter to prove that Klopp was right about him after all?
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