Klopp ‘didn’t want to sign’ Salah as Carragher reveals Liverpool manager’s preferred target

Suraj Radia

• 11 Jan 2024 16:19 GMT
• 3 min read

Jamie Carragher has revealed that Jurgen Klopp ‘didn’t want to sign’ Mohamed Salah when he first arrived at Liverpool and named the player who the German had preferred.

Salah has established himself as a Liverpool legend during his seven years at the club so far, winning seven trophies and becoming one of the club’s all-time top scorers with more than 200 goals.

However, if Klopp had his way, he would have signed Julian Brandt, who was playing for Bayer Leverkusen at the time and Carragher used the Liverpool boss’ hesitance to sign Salah as an example of why manager’s shouldn’t always be in charge of all transfer business.

“A really interesting one is Salah. Klopp has been quite open about this, he didn’t want to sign Salah. He wanted to sign Julian Brandt,” Carragher said on the Stick To Football podcast.

“Liverpool had tried to sign Salah when he went to Chelsea and the people behind the scenes at Liverpool were still there and Salah then went to Roma, and they were very adamant that they had to sign this player. You look at what Mohamed Salah has done, but it could have easily gone the other way.

“I do feel that this idea that managers should just buy every player isn’t right, but a manager shouldn’t have a player pushed on him.”

Brandt ‘would have loved’ to play for Klopp

Klopp’s long-term admiration of Brandt has been no secret, with the German boss having attempted to sign the winger for Dortmund as an 18-year-old, however he opted to join Leverkusen has he felt he would get more first team football there.

Brandt eventually did move to Dortmund in 2019 for €25 million, two years after Klopp had once again tried to sign him, this time at Liverpool, but was once again turned down.

Speaking to The Athletic last year, Brandt revealed Klopp affectionately ‘ripped into him’ from the sidelines every time the pair came up against each other and the Dortmund star admitted ‘it was a shame’ that his move to Liverpool never materialised.

“I had that chance to take that next step to join Liverpool, but the time wasn’t right for me,” Brandt said. “I was aware that they were also looking at Mo Salah at the time. It’s a shame because I would have loved to play for Kloppo.”