Liverpool midfielder Fabinho has revealed that compatriot Roberto Firmino played a role in his switch to Anfield.
The 25-year-old signed for the Reds from Monaco last summer, and suggested that countryman Firmino had a quiet word with manager Jurgen Klopp about the move.
Speaking to Esporte Interativo, he said: “I remember that after one of my games for Monaco, against Marseille, where I’d played well and scored, Firmino sent me a message and we started to talk.
“He said: ‘the coach asked about you, what I thought about you, I talked you up a little bit’.
“We exchanged some messages for a while and I asked him some things about Liverpool and that was it for a while.
“Then Liverpool reached my agents, made them aware of the interest and set up a meeting with Klopp.”
Você sabia que Roberto Firmino ajudou na chegada de @_fabinhotavares ao @LFC? Em papo exclusivo com @marcelobechler, o meia explicou melhor essa história! #CasaDaChampions #ChampionsNaTNT #ChampionsLeagueNoEIPlus pic.twitter.com/sP7zKLr7Hz
— TNT Sports BR (@TNTSportsBR) May 29, 2019
OPINION
Liverpool fans will love this. It’s easy to think about transfers as these faceless, almost unreal entities, but at the end of the day, footballers are human too, and if you’ve got a mate on the other end of a phone fighting your corner and talking up his team, then why wouldn’t you want to go? Fabinho took a little while to get going in England, but once he was up and running he enjoyed a superb season for the Reds, and you wouldn’t bet against him kicking on again next term. His solidity in front of the back four allows for those ahead of him to play with greater freedom, and in turn, means that the Reds are a more dangerous side. In short, he is the foundation on which so much of Liverpool’s play is built, and he is quickly becoming invaluable. Every team needs somebody willing to do the dirty work for the greater good, and at Anfield, that man is Fabinho.
