Naby Keita referred to four people positively influencing his decision to join Liverpool in a recent interview with The Independent.
The prestigious paper stated that the 23-year-old midfielder explained during his interview that joining the Reds was an easy decision despite late interest from Bayern Munich and Barcelona.
Keita listed former Reds boss Gérard Houllier, current star Sadio Mane, manager Jurgen Klopp and his father as the four people who influenced his decision to pick playing his football at Anfield rather than anywhere else.
“I could see how the club was developing (after talking to Mane),” Keita told the newspaper, who knew all about Klopp by the time he first met him.
“A big part of my decision was the role of the coach,” he continued.
“We had good conversations, the words he spoke to me about this project really convinced me.”
OPINION
The influence of Mane, who Keita played with at Salzburg, and Klopp are easy to be predicted when it comes to guessing who help convince Keita to sign. However with the defensive midfielder also choosing to share that his father and former Reds manager Houllier played an indirect role in securing his move to Anfield is interesting. Keita shares that Houllier previously told him “do everything you possibly can – establish yourself” and those words were no doubt ringing in the midfielder’s ear when he got the call about the Reds’ interest. According to the Independent’s description of Houllier was the one that recommended Keita to Salzburg when he was just a teenager and the midfielder probably took the manager’s past Reds connections as a good sign. It’s also amusing that the 23-year-old remembers wearing a Reds shirt when he was “11 or 12” due to it being his father’s team and with the player explaining how important his dad is to him, no wonder he opted to join the Reds this summer despite interest from two European powerhouses.
