Liverpool signed Lucca Brughmans in the summer and he is expected to be a top performer for the Reds in the coming years, but his move to Anfield came quickly.
There were just two days left in the summer transfer window when Liverpool sent Genk a formal offer for Brughmans, surprising the club’s Director of Football, Dimitri de Conde.
Liverpool also completed a late deal for Bradley Barcola worth £123m, but the Frenchman was the subject of talks with PSG for several weeks, making his move to Merseyside no secret.
Brughmans, however, is not a name that you read about in a list of Liverpool daily headlines before it happened, because even the player and his club didn’t know anything yet.
As de Conde has now revealed, Liverpool’s move was out of the blue and caught him and the Belgian club by surprise, even if they were more than happy to facilitate the transfer, particularly given that Brughmans was to spend this season on loan as part of the deal. This was due to work permit reasons.
“My first reaction was, oh boy, what now?” said Genk chief de Conde when asked by HLN about being told Liverpool had submitted a bid with just 48 hours left in the summer transfer window. “I knew he was on the radar of top clubs, that he’d even visited Real Madrid.
“He was one of the lads we had hoped to get a handsome fee for at some point to ensure the club’s survival. But for it to happen that quickly and for that amount, to be honest I never saw it coming. I got a call from his agency at in the morning on a Sunday, just two days before the English transfer window closed.
“They said, Liverpool are serious and this is their offer. The next morning Lucca was on a plane to Liverpool. I can only take credit for the fact that we, as a club, chose this path—that we could give Lucca his chance. At first it might have only been in the Playoff Two stage, but we did it nonetheless and he took it.”
