Over the past week or so, there have been a number of claims that Liverpool are interested in Franck Kessie.
The Milan star is out of contract next year, and with the Reds looking for someone to fill the gap left by Georginio Wijnaldum, there was the feeling an opportunity was there to exploit.
Since then, Kessie has made it clear he would love to stay at the Serie A club, but, as tends to be the case, his growth in status means he wants to be paid more.
That’s where talks are stalling for the time being and how the door opened for Liverpool to stick their foot in.
We’ve had two reports already claiming the Reds would be ready to give Kessie a big pay rise should he sign for them, regardless of how difficult it would be to convince Milan to sell him, and now we have a third.
It comes from Corriere dello Sport, who explain that Liverpool ‘had promised George Atangana’ (Kessie’s agent) that if the player’s contract started heading towards expiration, ‘they would have satisfied all his requests’.
As things stand, Milan have offered an annual wage of close to €6m, while the representative ‘pushes to reach €7m’.
It appears to be something Liverpool would be prepared to pay, but they seem reluctant to pay actual money for the midfielder, perhaps because they didn’t get any compensation for Wijnaldum.
Either way, since it appears we have to wait until January at the earliest for this to potentially happen, this isn’t one to get overly excited about just yet.
