Jürgen Klopp: “We were interested in Bellingham”

Although Liverpool ended up signing Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo - the summer transfer window of 2023 was a tricky one for the Anfield club.

At Jürgen Klopp’s press conference ahead of the Chelsea clash on Wednesday, the Reds boss admitted that they were interested in signing Jude Bellingham before he made the move to Real Madrid. Liverpool also fought to the bitter end with Chelsea to land two other midfielders: Moisés Caicedo and Roméo Lavia, but both ended up joining Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea for over €130m and €60m respectively.

Klopp said: “We were interested in Bellingham, realised it would not happen and we thought we could maybe do Caicedo so went in… (but) he had an emotional agreement already with Chelsea and Mauricio Pochettino. Then Lavia had his own reasons - so we were there. Then we found our top solution.”

Midfield reinforcements at Anfield

Real Madrid ended up paying just over €100 million for the young English midfielder, money that, according to the Liverpool manager, would have prevented them from reinforcing their midfield with more players after the departures of Fabinho, Jordan Henderson, Naby Keita and James Milner, among others.

Klopp added: “We found Wataru (Endo), we already knew Macca (Alexis Mac Allister) could play the position and Dom (Dominik Szoboszlai) was always on my radar. If one of the £100million (signings) had worked, there’s no chance to do another. That’s what I meant when I said we are so lucky. Everything in the ‘if not scenario’ worked out.”