Thiago Alcantara has quickly become one of our favourite players at the time, while it appears he didn’t put much effort in yesterday to achieve that.
Our 2-0 victory against Chelsea and the Spaniard’s 45-minute introduction illustrated just what sort of player we have managed to pick up for just £20m. An astonishing deal considering the calibre of player that we have captured.
Thiago started his career off at Barcelona where he came through their youth academy and into the first-team setup during the 2008/09 campaign and won the Champions League at Wembley three years later.
He won the league four times before moving to Bayern Munich in 2013 and helped the Bavarian club capture seven Bundesliga titles (via TransferMarkt), and capped it off with another European Cup victory on his final game.
But before we managed to prize him away from Hansi Flick’s side, his former side Barcelona were interested in taking him back to Spain.
According to Cadena Ser (via Sport Witness), the Catalan giants tried everything in their power to derail our pursuit for Thiago.
The report added that the even held a face-to-face meeting with Thiago himself. Club official Javier Bordas tried to convince the two-time Champions League winner to move back to his homeland. Even if he did decide to go down this route, Barcelona would have only been able to pay €10m (£9.1m) due to La Liga restrictions.
L4L’s view…
What a relief, eh? I guess it is hard to imagine a world without Thiago playing for Liverpool now after what we saw at Stamford Bridge yesterday.
Even though there was an element of worry that this deal may not have happened, Barcelona had no chance of getting, no matter what rabbit they pulled out of their hat.
The Mirror even reported recently that they cannot sign Georginio Wijnaldum either and that the same restrictions mean that they must sell before they buy.
It is an exciting time to be a Liverpool fan. Premier League champions, world champions and a world-class signing in Thiago coming to the club. Need I say any more than that?
