Liverpool is keeping a ‘watching brief’ on an Argentina midfield star in the making. It will help that he has signed for Benfica, a club the Reds have a history with.
The list of players that Liverpool could target in midfield is only growing. Over the past few days, the Reds have, rather predictably, been linked with a variety of names — some more likely than others to be realistic.
Benfica’s new signing Enzo Fernández is the latest to have been mentioned as a possible option — though any move would not be coming now. The South American has only just signed for the Portuguese outfit this summer and he won’t be moving away… yet.
“He feels good here, it’s the perfect place to develop,” Benfica boss Roger Schmidt said of the speculation linking him with a transfer away already (via Sport Witness). “He’s a great player, a great person, he’s focused, professional and knows what he does when he comes here. Everything came together at the right time.”
Liverpool, according to Sky Sports, has kept a ‘watching brief’ on the player, and while that phrasing will annoy the corners of the internet that revel in calling the Reds’ transfer strategy ‘Monitoring FC’, it is not without good reason.
Signed from River Plate this summer, and with a €120m (£102m) release clause, Fernández will not be at Benfica for long. The box-to-box midfielder has already notched three goal contributions in six appearances for his new side and has clearly already settled in.
A progressive passer from deep, the data in Europe for Fernández comes with a very limited sample size, which probably explains why he has ended up in Portugal, to begin with rather than heading straight for one of the biggest sides. He will, though, no matter what Schmidt says, take the next step sooner rather than later.
Liverpool tends to let other teams take the risk on a player like that, and only move for them after they have settled — as they have in recent times, also in Portugal, with Luis Díaz and Darwin Núñez.
That means that the cost will rise, and Fernández will certainly move for more than the €10m plus €8m of add-ons (£8.5m plus £6.8m) that he went to Portugal for.
Similar to another possible target Nicolò Barella in that he can play on the right-hand side of the midfield trio, offering creativity from there, Fernández already has an appealing profile.
His 14-goal contributions from 24 matches for River Plate last season — impressive and eye-catching for a midfield player — appear to have already started to translate to European football, and a part of the world where Julian Ward and Liverpool are very familiar.
Real Madrid and Manchester City, according to Fichajes, are also taking a look at Fernández, and the competition, should he further fulfill his potential over the next few months, will only increase again. But the 21-year-old is another reason that it remains likeliest that Liverpool will wait until 2023 before the signing of another midfielder.
Jude Bellingham, of course, is their number one target for next summer, but there are other options too. Liverpool could have taken the gamble with Fernández this year and got him relatively cheaply, but there is a reason that Benfica has positioned themselves where they have in the food chain.
The Portuguese side can afford to take the risk with players like Fernández and are prepared to sell on — for a healthy profit — the ones that pay off. Whether the Argentine is the next one they will cash in on remains to be seen — but Liverpool will be among those watching. A transfer earlier this summer would have been a big risk, though, and a transfer now is impossible.
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