The versatile 24-year-old arrives on a £35M deal and is signed through the summer of 2028.

Liverpool have officially completed their first signing of the summer as Jürgen Klopp gets in the first piece of his new-look midfield and 24-year-old Argentine World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister arrives on Merseyside from Brighton in a steal of a £35M deal. He will wear the number 10 shirt and is the seventh Argentinian to represent the club.

The final fee will come as a surprise to most, ending up roughly half of what many believed Mac Allister would go for this summer, and is the result of a clause inserted in the contract that the player signed with Brighton early in the autumn.

Some will cast it as a blow for Brighton, but given the player’s old deal expired this summer and he would have departed for free it’s clear the player and club agreed on an extension intended to satisfy all parties, giving Mac Allister a raise and an exit and Brighton at least some compensation.

Liverpool, one imagines, will also be feeling rather satisfied. The club’s knowledge of and ability to exploit a largely unknown clause and convince Mac Allister they were his best destination—and at that price, he could have gone anywhere—is a clear win for departing sporting director Julian Ward.

Then there’s the profile of the player himself, a highly versatile midfield workhorse on the verge of his prime years, a player both technically and tactically exceptional who will be expected to walk into one of the box-to-box eight roles in Klopp’s midfield.

As yet unconfirmed reports have Mac Allister signing a five-year deal with the Reds, tying the midfield man down through the summer of 2028 with the weekly wage believed to be in the neighborhood of £150k.

There is more work to be done for Liverpool on the transfer front this summer, with a minimum of one further major midfield signing and one new top-end center-half needed along with potential others, but as far as starts to an offseason go, it doesn’t get better or more promising than this.