Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta might need a new centre-back with RB Leipzig’s Dayot Upamecano potentially Premier League bound.
Dayot Upamecano is part of a very exclusive club. He is one of very few centre-halves across Europe who has kept the lethal Robert Lewandowski off the score sheet this season.
Bayern Munich’s prolific Pole has 39 goals in just 33 games across 2019/20, making Mats Hummels, Antonio Rudiger, Toby Alderweireld and many others look more than a little silly along the way. But not Upamecano.
At just 21, the powerhouse Frenchman is rapidly establishing himself as one of Europe’s elite centre-halves. And a Man of the Match display in February’s goalless draw between RB Leipzig and Bayern in a top-of-the-table Bundesliga clash left Lewandowski marvelling at the quality of a much-admired youngster.
“Leipzig have two really good centre-backs in Dayot Upamecano and Ibrahima Konate,” one of the modern game’s best centre-forwards told the Bundesliga website.
Unfortunately for Julian Nagelsmann and the Bundesliga as a whole, however, it seems that there is a very real possibility that Upamecano could follow in the footsteps of Naby Keita by swapping Leipzig for Liverpool.
Passione Inter reports that the France U21 international is a £50 million target for Liverpool with Dejan Lovren expected to depart and leave space for a new centre-half at Anfield in the summer transfer window.
Arsenal are interested too, via the Mirror. If Upamecano’s marvellous Champions League performance against Tottenham recently is anything to go by, he might just be the top-class defensive talent the Gunners have been missing since Thomas Vermaelen’s heyday.
You’d imagine that Lewandowski would only be too happy to see Upamecano pack his bags and bid farewell to Germany.
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