Dutch icon Marco Van Basten has issued a warning to PSV Eindhoven star Cody Gakpo after Liverpool and Manchester City reportedly showed an interest in the winger.
Reports from the Netherlands yesterday indicated that the Premier League duo had held ‘exploratory talks’ over the 22-year-old.
Voetbal International reported that both Liverpool and Manchester City had started the process to potentially sign Gakpo in the summer transfer window.
The Dutch winger has been showing impressive development with PSV since moving into the first team in 2018, with 31 goals and 29 assists in 116 games for the club, a tally not to be sniffed at.
Indeed, those are the kind of numbers that get you noticed, and it seems that has now happened, with Liverpool and Manchester City seemingly holding talks with the player about a move to the Premier League.
Either move would be a huge one for the youngster, who has never played outside of the Netherlands after developing in PSV’s youth set up and moving through the various levels with them.
And Van Basten isn’t convinced he should be moving now, predicting that things could go wrong if he does.
“He has been in the Eredivisie for a year now,” Voetbal4U report him saying.
“You have to have a basis to succeed abroad. That is three, four years in the Netherlands.
“Then you’re just a bit stronger, a bit better prepared for the higher level abroad – because it all goes much harder and faster. But nowadays, they all want to leave after one year.”
“The sooner you leave, the greater the chance of not succeeding. If you don’t succeed in those two, three years, then you go to another club that is less. Then your career is going to look very nasty.
“They are constantly approached by that agent saying: ‘Look, you can earn that there. You can earn that at that club’. It’s far too much about buying those guys off.
“I could go to Fiorentina at one point. I thought to myself: Am I ready for Fiorentina? No. But this manager wanted me to go. Because that’s just money for him and for me. What you have to do is sit in an attic room and ask yourself: Is this what I want? Then when you think you’re ready, you go.”
