Dietmar Hamann is again backing Joelinton for a move to Liverpool – but thinks Cody Gakpo could end up becoming like the Newcastle United man.
Liverpool have agreed a deal to sign PSV Eindhoven winger Gakpo ahead of the January transfer window.
The winger has been in red-hot form this season with 13 goals and a ridiculous 17 assists in 24 games.
Long linked with Manchester United, Gakpo will now join liverpool instead and add to Liverpool’s attacking options.
Gakpo has mostly played as a left-sided winger for PSV, but we also saw him play as a number 10 and as a striker for the Netherlands.
Liverpool do have other options that can play on the left though – Fabio Carvalho, Darwin Nunez, even Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz when they return from injury.
Just where Gakpo fits in has been debated over the last couple of days and one former Liverpool player has a surprise suggestion.
Hamann backs Gakpo to be Liverpool’s Joelinton
Ex-Liverpool midfielder Dietmar Hamann has told talkSPORT that he thinks Gakpo could end up playing in midfield.
Hamann suggests that Liverpool have needed a player like Gakpo for years now, believing that his size and physicality is perfect to play in midfield.
The German thinks that Newcastle United star Joelinton is exactly the kind of player Liverpool need and Gakpo could be similar.
Hamann thinks that the pace and drive Gakpo provides can really help Liverpool in the middle of the pitch, even if that isn’t his position.
“They have needed a player like him for the last few years,” said Hamann. “I don’t think they have enough of a goal threat from midfield. They are always a threat from set-pieces and that will be strengthened with his size and physicality. And in midfield, at times I feel they lack a bit of physicality.”
“They don’t have a player who has the physicality that he has got. I always look at Joelinton as a player in the mould Liverpool needed because he can drive from midfield, he can head the ball, very good technically, and he has got a bit of pace about him as well. He is a great addition and I hope we see a lot of him in the next few weeks and months,” he added.
This seems like a bonkers suggestion at first glance because Gakpo is so dangerous in the final third, why drop him deeper on the pitch?
Yet Joelinton himself was an attacker at Hoffenheim, playing up front or out wide for the German club before joining Newcastle in 2019.
The Brazilian struggled in the Premier League before being turned into a box-to-box midfielder by Eddie Howe, turning him into a Premier League star.
We can’t really see that fate for Gakpo but if Jurgen Klopp wants to try something out of the box, this could be an idea for Liverpool.
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