The World Cup is over, and it will now be one month until the Premier League returns, with Liverpool desperate to roar back to life as title contenders.
Andoni Iraola is warming to his new job as Liverpool head coach, tasked with restoring the ‘rock and roll’ mood to Anfield after such a dour and deflating decline under Arne Slot’s wing.
Liverpool have not yet dominated the transfer market as they did last year, but FSG are intent on strengthening further, with Jeremy Jacquet and Victor Munoz already having bolstered the squad.
Munoz is a dynamic and flashy winger, and the hope, perhaps, is that he will restore something of Luis Diaz to a Liverpool frontline who went rather stale in his absence last year.
Why Liverpool sold Luis Diaz
Hindsight can be a terrible thing, a lens through which you have to stare at your mistakes. For Liverpool, the decision to sell Diaz and the subsequent decision to refrain from replacing him with a like-for-like winger created big problems for Slot and co.
Diaz, 29, joined Liverpool from Porto in a deal rising to £49m in January 2022, and he scored 41 goals and supplied 23 assists across 148 games. He never hit the same heights as Sadio Mane before him, but the Colombian was undoubtedly a key cog in a title-winning machine.
Diaz has bloomed into a new kind of attacker at Bayern. His pace and potency and unwavering intensity lend themselves to superstardom in the Bundesliga. He is afforded more time to strut his stuff with the German giants, who dominate year on year.
But he is still a sensation, someone who notched 25 goals involvements in 2024/25 when Liverpool lifted the Premier League with Slot. Across 51 matches with Bayern, though, he has posted 26 goals and 23 assists.
Revisionism is the easy lens through which the Diaz sale could be viewed. But Diaz is pushing 30, and Bayern offered £65.5m to take him off Liverpool’s hands ahead of the penultimate year of his contract.
The fatal flaw in Slot and FSG’s master plan, however, was to place so much time and effort and money into signing Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak without addressing the loss of balance and fluency that Diaz provided down the left. Cody Gakpo has struggled in a role of greater import.
Now, Iraola needs to make things right, and he can do that by easing the weight of expectation on the young Munoz by signing a worldwide sensation to replace Diaz.
How Liverpool could finally replace Diaz
Munoz, a World Cup champion with Spain, has only just turned 23 years old, and he is comparatively inexperienced. He can play across the frontline, but to expect him to hit Diaz and Mane-esque heights from the get-go might be somewhat foolish.
And with that in mind, it’s important that FSG continue to knock doors down in their pursuit of Paris Saint-Germain’s Bradley Barcola, with TEAMtalk confirming that talks for the French forward are ongoing, but that Manchester United are developing a vested interest of their own.
The 23-year-old is quickly emerging as one of the highest-profile forwards in the world, and PSG are expected to demand £128m for his signature this summer. Whether they stick to that exorbitant figure is another question, though.
In regard to Liverpool, we know a few things. We know that FSG consider the Frenchman a top target, and we know that they would not pay a fee in excess of the British-record £125m that roped Isak over to Anfield last summer. We also know that personal terms will not be an issue, with Barcola looking for a prominent role at an elite outfit.
He is almost there. Barcola is principally a left-sided attacker, but he is comfortable on the right, where he leans more into the creative side of his game, right-footed as he is. This is a budding “superstar”, according to Liverpool writer Dave Hendrick, someone who could fill a Salah-shaped hole next year and beyond.
Bradley Barcola vs Luis Diaz at the 2026 World Cup | ||
|---|---|---|
Stats (* per 90) | Barcola | Diaz |
Matches (starts) | 8 (4) | 5 (5) |
Goals | 3 | 1 |
Assists | 1 | 1 |
Shots (on target)* | 1.3 (0.6) | 3.8 (1.2) |
Big chances missed | 1 | 3 |
Accurate passes* | 13.5 (86%) | 27.6 (85%) |
Chances created* | 1.0 | 2.0 |
Succ. dribbles* | 1.6 (59%) | 0.8 (25%) |
Ball recoveries* | 1.6 | 3.4 |
Def. contributions* | 1.1 | 0.6 |
Duels won* | 3.1 | 3.4 |
He is still developing, but he might just be the Diaz upgrade that Liverpool need. Their former sensation was not at his sharpest for Colombia this summer, even though he played an important role for the South American side.
Barcola still has a lot to work on, but he is naturally prolific, clinical in a way that Liverpool will need to help combat the departure of Mohamed Salah, whose contract expired at the start of the month.
Across the past two years with PSG, the Les Bleus man has scored 34 goals and supplied 28 assists, crucial in winning back-to-back Champions Leagues and a wealth of domestic silverware besides.
Diaz might be riding the crest of a wave over in Germany, but we know that he never sustained those heights for Liverpool. Barcola, however, is getting better and better; six years Diaz’s junior, he might just be a world-class player in the making, far outperforming Diaz at Anfield and actually cementing himself as a talisman for Iraola’s outfit.
