Liverpool’s rivals Manchester City are on course to complete their third signing of the summer, Jeremy Doku, while Pep Guardiola looks to strengthen his treble-winning side.
The Belgian will fill the role vacated earlier this transfer window by Riyad Mahrez, who joined Roberto Firmino at Saudi Pro League club Al Ahli. Doku is a name Reds fans should know given his links to a move to Anfield in recent years. Also in June of this year Jürgen Klopp showed great interest in signing.
Though City reportedly swamped their remaining competition to secure a £55m deal with Rennes for the 21-year-old. Fabrizio Romano’s last word is that medical tests are underway in the Northwest.
This puts Doku on track to be announced ahead of the weekend and he would then be lined up to make his Premier League debut against Sheffield United on Sunday. Although his trajectory to the top of England could have looked very different and could have happened much sooner.
The winger’s career path has seen him leave his home country and boyhood club Anderlecht for Ligue 1 in 2020 for a fee of £22.2m. This was clearly a move long in the making, as the Belgian club had had their prodigious talk with potential candidates two years earlier – Liverpool and Klopp among them – with a £500,000 deal on the horizon.
There are even indications that Anderlecht were convinced that the then 15-year-old’s destination would be Merseyside, as Lazar Markovic went the other way on loan that same summer when the two clubs were on good terms.
Though it was a welcome procession when a teenage Doku and his family didn’t quite go to plan, and Klopp could perhaps blame club legend Sadio Mane, however benign his intentions were.
“My 16th birthday was approaching, the age at which you can sign a professional contract. Many teams came to me. Liverpool were the most concrete interest, but there were also Arsenal and Chelsea,” Doku explained to Ouest-France after making sure he chose to join Rennes.
“I went with my mom and dad and we got a tour of the stadium, the training ground and even the school I was going to. They gave me a shirt signed by Salah and I got to know the players.
“I was able to chat with Jürgen and Gerrard, we watched some video moments and he talked about development. We met players, [Simon] Mignolet because he was Belgian, [Gini] Wijnaldum from the Netherlands. I spoke a lot with Mané, but we didn’t really talk about football, we talked about everything.
He told me that I was young, that I still had time…he didn’t want to convince me or tell me: ‘Come here, you will succeed.'”
“So I chose to be careful,” Doku recalls. “I knew what my trajectory had to be. I knew which trajectory I had to follow and I knew in that moment that I had to stay at Anderlecht.”
