Liverpool are among several clubs keeping a watchful eye on Werder Bremen and Kosovo winger Milot Rashica, the president of the Football Federation of Kosovo has claimed.
Rashica previously played for Eredivisie club Vitesse Arnhem and made the switch to Germany in January 2018. He has impressed for Bremen and had scored 10 goals in all competitions, as well as providing five assists, prior to this season being halted as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
“There are many requests for him. I know that Liverpool in the Premier League want him, but also Leipzig in the Bundesliga,” FFK president Agim Amedi told Balkan network Syri TV, as quoted by the Evening Standard.
“I am sure that he will be advised in the best way to make his decision.”
Despite the persistent speculation surrounding superstar names like Kylian Mbappe and Jadon Sancho, it has been well established for a number of months that Liverpool have little to no interest in pursuing marquee stars with enormous price tags.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp expressed his admiration for Mbappe as a player in November, explaining that from a ‘sporting view’ there are ‘not a lot of reasons to not sign him’. But because of the likely money involved the Reds boss stated there is ‘absolutely no chance’ it could happen.
“Sorry for killing that story,” he said in summary.
Klopp recently namedropped both Mbappe and Sancho as he was listing some of the best players in the world, having also been asked for his opinion on the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
But in that same interview he also added: “Look, I cannot answer those kinds of questions without creating headlines the next day, I know that's what I don’t want to do. I love them all and there's a few more players out there.”
Despite his reservations, the headlines still appeared. But deals for Mbappe and Sancho are not what Liverpool are after.
In January, David Ornstein wrote for The Athletic it is ‘probable that neither Sancho nor Mbappe will end up at Anfield for the foreseeable future’, describing Liverpool as having ‘little interest’ in spending the kind of money it would take to land such players.
An element of that is being unable to guarantee automatic starts for anyone new, as well as having no interest in breaking up existing front three Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino.
When Takumi Minamino arrived from Red Bull Salzburg in January it was fully in the knowledge that he would take a back-up role, with the hope the Japanese star would improve and develop.
“The strategy of sporting director Michael Edwards is set to lead Liverpool on a similar path going forward and it is believed they will seek more Minamino-type recruits than, say, Sanchos,” Ornstein further explained at the time.
Still a relative unknown on these shores, Rashica is definitely far more ‘Minamino’ than ‘Sancho’.
Liverpool are over the need to spend huge sums, as they did to complete their team with the 2018 captures of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, and would happily point to the fact that Salah, nor Mane, nor Firmino were established world class stars when they arrived at Anfield.
That level is something they have achieved in the years since.
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Source : 90min