Liverpool Eye €50 Million Deal for Young Defender Finn Jeltsch
Liverpool are circling a €50 million deal – and the target is one of Europe’s most intriguing young defenders.
The club’s recruitment plans for 2027 are already being sketched out, and the blueprint is far from complete. The squad inherited from Richard Hughes has gaps in key areas, with the defensive core looking particularly fragile beyond the short term.
Centre-back is where the alarm bells ring loudest.
Right now, Liverpool can point to five senior options. On paper, that sounds comfortable. In reality, every single one comes with a question mark.
Virgil van Dijk is out of contract next summer. Joe Gomez is in the same situation. Ronald Araujo is only at Anfield on loan and would cost €50m to keep permanently.
Strip those three away and the future suddenly looks very thin.
That leaves Jeremy Jacquet and Giovanni Leoni as the only centre-backs guaranteed to be on the books beyond this season. Both are talented. Both are also unproven at the very top level.
Jacquet, the older of the pair at 21, is working his way back from shoulder surgery. Leoni, just 19, has been sidelined for around a year with a serious knee injury. Liverpool like their potential, but potential alone does not anchor a title-chasing defence.
So the club will have to go back into the market in 2027. And it seems they’ve already picked out a name.
Liverpool eye Finn Jeltsch
According to TuttoJuve, Liverpool are among the clubs tracking Finn Jeltsch, with Stuttgart braced for serious interest in the 19-year-old next year.
Jeltsch burst onto the scene in the Bundesliga last season. Across Europe’s top five leagues, only 14 teenage centre-backs managed at least 1,000 minutes. Push that bar to 1,500 minutes and the list shrinks to 10. On that shorter list, Liverpool’s Value Adder model ranks Jeltsch around the fifth-best performer of the group.
Those numbers explain Stuttgart’s stance. They are not looking to cash in on the cheap. The report claims they want €50m, and they are not short of suitors.
Arsenal, Manchester United and Bayern Munich are all said to be keeping tabs, turning Jeltsch’s future into a potential tug of war between some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Liverpool are in that conversation.
Whether they actually pull the trigger is another matter.
On one hand, Jeltsch fits the profile: young, already tested at a high level, and with the kind of upside that can define a back line for a decade. On the other, Liverpool are already heavily invested in youth at centre-back.
The only defenders they are certain to have at the club beyond this season have an average age of just 20. Committing another €50m to a 20-year-old in 2027 would load even more responsibility onto an already raw unit.
From a squad-building perspective, it looks risky. From a value perspective, it might be exactly the kind of bet Liverpool feel they have to make in a market where established centre-backs cost eye-watering sums.
The interest is real, the competition is fierce, and the price is high.
Jeltsch won’t be short of offers. The question is whether Liverpool decide that another prodigy is the answer to a looming defensive rebuild, or whether they walk away and leave the next great Bundesliga export to someone else.
