Three years ago, Liverpool paid an initial £64 million ($86m) for Darwin Nunez, a young striker with just one prolific season under his belt. The gamble did not pay off. On the contrary, it backfired badly, with the Uruguayan now regarded as one of the most disappointing deals in the club’s history.
It’s fascinating, then, that Liverpool have now committed even more money to signing another forward with a less impressive CV than that of Nunez back in 2022.
So, why were the Reds willing to stump up an initial £69m ($92.7m) for Hugo Ekitike? And what chance does he have of succeeding where Nunez failed so spectacularly? GOAL explores one of the biggest and most intriguing transfers of the summer so far…
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GettyDisastrous Darwin decision
Liverpool began their search for a new No.9 long before the end of the 2021-22 season. As far as the Reds’ recruitment team was concerned, there were three outstanding young strikers in Europe at the time – Nunez, Alexander Isak and Erling Haaland – and that view would have been shared by scouts all across the continent.
As Liverpool’s former director of research Ian Graham recently revealed, Haaland was out of their price range, meaning they were left with a straight choice between Isak or Nunez. Then-manager Jurgen Klopp favoured the latter, so the Reds signed the Uruguayan. It proved a disastrous decision.
While Isak established himself as one of the most feared forwards in the Premier League after joining Newcastle from Real Sociedad in August 2022, Nunez became a laughing stock, a maddeningly frustrating forward mercilessly mocked for his atrocious finishing.
Liverpool’s desire to sell him this summer has, thus, come as no surprise. He has had numerous chances to prove his worth at Anfield and, rather fittingly, failed to take any of them.
