Arriving from Imperial Academy in Nigeria back in 2015, Taiwo Awoniyi has yet to make a first-team appearance for Liverpool.
Over the past five years, the striker has been sent on six loans to five different clubs, ranging from NEC Nijmegen in Holland to Royal Excel Mouscron in Belgium.
The latest of these saw him join 1.FSV Mainz 05 in Germany for the 2019-20 season, where things didn’t go as planned.
Awoniyi only managed 12 appearances in the Bundesliga, starting just five of those, and when things started to look better for him, he suffered a severe concussion in a game against Augsburg that saw him miss the last three games of the season.
While he might not have been as big of a hit on the pitch as many had hoped, behind the scenes was a different matter altogether, and Mainz would like to keep him for the next campaign too if they can.
This comes via the German side’s director of football, Rouven Schröder, in terms relayed by Kicker on Monday.
He said: “Taiwo is a symbol of identification despite not being a permanent member of the club. He raised his voice internally to describe what the players could do for the club. It simply shows what he’s like as a footballer but also as a human being. Although he was not in the squad due to the competition, he led every training session. We told him we were very happy with him”.
“He went back to Liverpool on July 1st. We can imagine that he will continue under certain parameters”.
What those are isn’t stated, but Kicker hint that because Jürgen Klopp is unlikely to have plans to integrate Awoniyi at Anfield in the first-team next season, the prospect of a ‘new contract in Mainz is therefore quite realistic’.
