Liverpool's Next £100m Signing: Mamadou Sangare
The £100m footballer used to be a unicorn. Now it feels like a starting point.
A few seasons back, that kind of fee was reserved for the absolute elite. The very best on the planet. The idea of Liverpool smashing through that barrier not once but twice in a single summer would have sounded like fantasy.
Then last year happened.
Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak walked through the doors at Anfield with price tags that bent reality. Two £100m headline acts in one window. Liverpool bet big, and they bet long: six-year contracts, the kind you hand to players you expect to define an era.
Have they lived up to it yet? No. Not fully.
There have been flashes, moments when Wirtz’s vision or Isak’s movement hinted at something special. But across a full season, neither has consistently matched the size of the investment or the weight of the expectation. That doesn’t mean the story is written. Far from it.
With Andoni Iraola now in charge, Liverpool clearly believe the best is still to come from both. His high-energy, aggressive style feels built for players like them. If this project is going to work, Wirtz and Isak can’t just be expensive signings. They have to become the heartbeat of the team.
And Liverpool are going to have to get used to that level of outlay.
The current market is brutal. Fees are inflating to the point of absurdity. Players like Elliot Anderson are moving for around £120m. That’s not an outlier anymore; it’s the going rate for a “very good” footballer rather than a generational one.
Liverpool are part of that reality now. To land Bradley Barcola this summer, they’re preparing to cross the £100m line yet again. Another nine-figure forward to refresh the attack, another swing at the top shelf.
Barcola is expected to be one of two attacking additions, with a right-sided winger also on the agenda before the window shuts. Once that rebuild in the final third is done, attention will inevitably drift back a line.
To Midfield
Trey Nyoni is earmarked as the future. Dominik Szoboszlai has extended his stay and is already being spoken about as a likely captain next summer. Ryan Gravenberch is tied down long term as well. The core is there.
But the picture isn’t complete. Curtis Jones has gone. Alexis Mac Allister’s future is uncertain. For a club that has built so much of its recent success on control and intensity in the middle of the pitch, those are not small questions.
At some point, Liverpool will have to drop serious money into that area again.
For a while, Adam Wharton looked like the obvious answer. Technically secure, tactically sharp, Premier League-proven at a young age – the kind of player you could easily imagine being talked about as Liverpool’s next £100m man.
Then came the opening weekend.
At Brentford against Tottenham, another name elbowed its way into the conversation and refused to leave. Mamadou Sangare didn’t just arrive in the Premier League; he took it by the throat.
The Malian midfielder did everything the Ligue 1 scouts and analysts said he could. He ran the game. He dictated the tempo. He snapped into duels, carried the ball, and never stopped offering himself as an outlet.
He set up Brentford’s opener with a smart assist, then unleashed the shot that led to their third on the rebound. Every time Spurs tried to play through the centre, Sangare seemed to be there – intercepting, pressing, driving his team forward.
He didn’t just look good. He looked built for Iraola.
The energy, the ground he covers, the way he can turn defence into attack in a couple of strides – it all screams Liverpool under this new regime. You could see him in red without even trying.
That’s why, when people start talking about Liverpool’s next £100m signing, the conversation is shifting. It’s no longer just Wharton or the next fashionable name on a data list. It’s Sangare, front and centre, suddenly feeling like the most obvious big-money target on the horizon.
In this market, with this manager, and with Liverpool’s midfield heading for another reshuffle, the logic is hard to ignore.
Next summer, if he keeps playing like that, the question might not be whether Liverpool go for Mamadou Sangare.
It might be whether anyone can stop them.
