rashford shirt Thiago, meanwhile, headed for Bayern, managed of course by the other Guardiola. Manchester United, too, had made a move, but their new manager David Moyes chose instead to go after another Barca midfielder, Cesc Fabregas, and instead ended up with Maroaune Fellaini. It wasn’t a vintage summer, it has to be said, for English football’s two most successful clubs.
United were linked, briefly, with Thiago again this time around, but it was always Liverpool who had the player’s eye. As early as May, reports in Germany were stating that Thiago wanted to play for Klopp, and that he was eager to link up with the newly-crowned champions.
He arrives as a winner. His last game for Bayern was the Champions League final win over Paris Saint-Germain in Lisbon last month, and there are few players in the game with the CV he has. Since making his debut for Barcelona as a teenager in 2009, Thiago has won no fewer than 24 major club honours, including nine league titles, two Champions Leagues and two Fifa Club World Cups.
He should fit in pretty well with this Liverpool side, then. It has been hard to see ways for Klopp to improve a team which in the last 20 months has achieved European, World and English glory, but the addition of a genuinely top-class midfielder, a player of vision, touch and unrivalled footballing intelligence, should do the trick.
Klopp has long been an admirer, speaking publicly about Thiago when signing Naby Keita from RB Leipzig in 2017. Those two, he said, were the best two midfielders in the Bundesliga cheap football kits kids at that point. Now they will be lining up alongside each other at Anfield – a mouth-watering prospect.