Last summer,
Brighton tried again but found the process complicated this time because Benfica were trying to reach the Champions League group stages. The price kept going up and once Benfica had qualified, they weren’t interested in selling.
In January,
West Ham believed they were very close to securing a £45 million deal but Benfica were never likely to sell at that price when they had progressed to the knockout stages of the Champions League, which meant that the player’s price had the potential to skyrocket.
That is exactly what happened. Before Liverpool’s quarter-final with Benfica — where Nunez scored in each leg —
Manchester United had arranged to meet Benfica’s president Rui Costa to discuss a deal but Costa and his family suffered food poisoning celebrating his birthday. With the meeting postponed, United officials needed some convincing and may have taken it as a snub. It did not help United that new manager Erik ten Hag, who likes Nunez a lot having seen him score against Ajax in the Champions League, was not appointed by the time Liverpool started to gain headway in their pursuit. Ten Hag, it is believed, has also since prioritised other positions for improvement — particularly midfield.
After a 3-3 draw at Anfield, Klopp approached Benfica’s caretaker manager Nelson Verissimo and congratulated him for his team’s run in the competition, along with their performance in the game. During that exchange, he also told Verissimo that in Nunez, Benfica were in possession of a fine footballer.
Geography had made it easier for Liverpool to examine Nunez’s development since moving to Spain three years ago. The reports on the club’s database go back to Penarol, however, where he was a team-mate of midfielder Maxi Rodriguez, the former Liverpool midfielder who testified for the player’s appetite in training.
According to Rodriguez, he was a “fighter”, who always turned up early and seemed to push himself further than any of the club’s youngest players. For Klopp — who takes time-keeping very seriously — this was another reason to bring him to Anfield and place him at the centre of his second Liverpool.
