Liverpool's Pursuit of Kaishu Sano Heats Up Amidst Summer Struggles
Liverpool’s summer was supposed to be loud. It has been anything but.
With Arne Slot replaced by Andoni Iraola, the expectation around Anfield was clear: a reset, a refresh, a squad rebuilt with five or six new faces to drag the club into its next cycle. Instead, as August edges into view, Victor Munoz stands alone as the only arrival.
For a club that ended 2025-26 already feeling a step short of the elite, that is an uncomfortable place to be. Right now, Liverpool look lighter, not stronger.
Rumours have done the heavy lifting. Names have circled around L4 for weeks, some fleeting, others reappearing with daily updates that keep the transfer machine churning. Supporters have clung to that repetition as a sign that movement will eventually come, that the line-up on the opening day of 2026-27 will bear little resemblance to the one that limped over the line last season.
It may have to. Especially in midfield.
Midfield in flux, money on the table
On paper, midfield remains Liverpool’s deepest department. In reality, it is on the brink of serious change. Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and Trey Nyoni have all been linked with exits, and any one departure would demand a response. Lose more than one and the rebuild becomes unavoidable.
That is why so many midfielders have been pushed towards the Anfield conversation. Some are little more than background noise. Others are edging closer to the foreground as the weeks tick by.
Liverpool have not exactly disguised their capacity to spend. Talks have reportedly opened with Paris Saint-Germain over Bradley Barcola, a move that would not come cheap and underlines the financial muscle still available to Iraola’s new regime.
Yet the next big outlay might be in the engine room. And that is where Kaishu Sano enters the frame.
Mainz draw a hard line on Sano
If Liverpool want Sano this summer, they will have to pay. Handsomely.
Mainz sporting director Christian Heidel made that much clear when speaking to Bild about the Japan international’s future.
“I won't comment on any rumours or any of the clubs mentioned. We don't have to sell Kaishū; we can afford to keep him,” Heidel said.
“If he stays, there will be many happy people in the team, the club, and everywhere around it. But it's like always at Mainz 05. Should an offer come in that takes our breath away, we'll have to consider it!”
The message is blunt: Sano is not on the market, unless someone makes him impossible to refuse. For a Premier League club with Liverpool’s resources, that translates into a fee in the region of £50 million — the figure understood to be Mainz’s benchmark.
In a market as inflated as this one, that number is not outrageous. But it is still a statement fee for a player many in England have only just started to notice.
From World Cup cameo to Liverpool’s radar
Outside of the 2026 World Cup, Sano remains relatively unknown to the casual fan. There is no hype machine behind him, no endless clips doing the rounds on social media. Just a quietly impressive body of work in Germany.
The 25-year-old has been in the Bundesliga since the 2024-25 season, amassing 84 appearances for Mainz in all competitions. Eighty of those have come as a defensive midfielder, anchoring the side rather than decorating it.
He is not a headline-chasing No. 10. He is the one who keeps the structure intact.
Even so, Sano still found a way to influence the scoresheet last season, contributing to seven goals during the 2025-26 campaign. For a holding midfielder, that is a useful bonus rather than the core of his appeal.
The real attraction lies in what he would do to Liverpool’s internal competition.
A direct challenge in Liverpool’s engine room
Drop Sano into Iraola’s squad and Ryan Gravenberch suddenly has a very real fight on his hands.
The Japanese midfielder’s profile — disciplined, positionally sharp, comfortable screening the back line — would give Liverpool a different type of option at the base of midfield. He would not arrive to make up the numbers. He would arrive to start games, or at the very least to push those who currently do.
At around £50 million, he represents the kind of calculated gamble top clubs have to take: not a superstar name, but a player at the right age, with top-league experience, and the physical and tactical tools to adapt quickly.
There is a catch, and it is a significant one. Sano does nothing for Liverpool’s homegrown quota. If Jones is sold to help fund the rebuild, the club would still need another midfielder who satisfies domestic registration rules. One problem solved, another created.
That is the tightrope Liverpool now walk.
Spend big on a foreign anchor like Sano and accept that a second midfield deal becomes essential. Or hold fire, risk missing out, and hope that the thin, uncertain squad Iraola has inherited does not start the season already chasing its tail.
