DONE DEAL: Liverpool complete deal to make Darwin Nunez their record signing

Why Liverpool want to make Darwin Nunez their record signing

There can be no faulting the ambition of Brighton, Newcastle United and West Ham United, all of whom made attempts to sign Darwin Nunez in the last year, although it is safe to say that their respective pursuits of the Benfica striker were always going to be long shots.

With respect to those three Premier League teams, it would not have taken a particularly extensive conversation for them to learn that Nunez has loftier ambitions and bigger dreams, so he will no doubt be delighted by the fact Liverpool are prepared to smash their transfer record to sign him.

The likes of Brighton and Newcastle might see Nunez as a player capable of taking them to the next level, but the view within the game is that the 22-year-old is already at that level — and that those teams needed him far more than he needed them.

Last summer, especially, when Brighton made a concerted effort to sign the Uruguayan, there was no suggestion that Nunez would be willing to sacrifice Champions League football in order to play for a team that had just finished 16th in the Premier League table. In short, it was a case of “thanks, but no thanks”.

Over the following season, Benfica and Nunez have been proven emphatically right in their decision to hold out for a bigger move to a bigger club. All of the evidence suggests he is far too good to be plugging away in mid-table or scrapping for the Europa League.

Nunez finished the campaign with 34 goals in 41 appearances in all competitions, and scored at least six more goals than any other player in the Portuguese top flight. In the Champions League, against some of the most fearsome opponents in world football, he was similarly ruthless: he found the net against Barcelona and Bayern Munich, and struck in both legs of Benfica’s quarter-final against Liverpool.

When Newcastle and West Ham made their approaches in January (West Ham are believed to have made a bid of around £50 million), they might well have known that it could have been their last chance to land him. Now the bigger sharks have swum into these waters, with Liverpool, Manchester United and Atletico Madrid among the teams looking at Nunez this summer.

Liverpool’s interest is understandable, given the likely departure of Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich in the coming weeks, and Jurgen Klopp’s admiration was obvious after his meeting with Nunez in the Champions League.

“An extremely good looking boy, and a decent player as well,” said the Liverpool manager. “Really good, really good. I knew it before but he played pretty much in front of me. Physically strong, quick, was calm with his finish. Really good. If he stays healthy, it’s a big career ahead of him.”

Virgil van Dijk, the Liverpool centre-back and the club's current record signing at £75m, also made it clear how highly he rated Nunez. Speaking a few weeks ago, Van Dijk listed Nunez among the five toughest opponents he has faced, along with Sergio Aguero, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland.

The issue will be the size of the fee, with Benfica reported to be demanding about £85m for the player. It remains to be seen whether the final figure will quite reach those levels, though, as sources close to Nunez claimed in the spring that a deal worth around £60m would probably be enough. Benfica signed Nunez from Almeria in a club-record deal worth around £20m in 2020.

It is not hard to see why the likes of Liverpool and United have added Nunez to their list of targets. He is strong, fast, powerful in the air and deadly in the penalty area. To watch his goals this season is to see a player capable of finding the net in all sorts of ways: right foot, left foot, tap-ins, long-rangers, booming headers, penalties.

If only Barcelona had listened to the advice of Luis Suarez, the former Liverpool striker, then Nunez might already be playing for one of the world’s superclubs. Nunez was still turning out for Almeria, in the Spanish second tier, when Suarez told Barcelona to move quickly.

“I recommended Darwin to Barcelona,” Suarez revealed in an interview with journalist Gerard Romero. “I have 15 years of international experience, so I know a thing or two about forwards. I told them: ‘pay attention to this one, he is very good, he has very interesting things.’

“They told me he was at Almeria and that he was too young. But instead of now paying €80m, €90m or €100m, they would have paid €15m or €20m.”

Barcelona’s financial troubles did not help their cause, and at that point it was not entirely clear what sort of player Nunez would become.

He had scored an impressive 16 goals in 30 second-tier matches for Almeria, having signed from Uruguayan side Penarol in 2019, but the gap between the second division and the leading teams is evidently a considerable one.