With the exception of Belarus, South Korea and starting this Saturday, Germany, global football is currently suspended. The Premier League has been given the all clear by the government to restart after June 1, behind closed doors, and with that in mind, teams are now training awhile adhering to social distancing guidelines.
However, there are still plenty of questions to be answered when it comes to Project Restart, and we’ll learn more this week as meetings are held and votes taken. Until football returns, we still have plenty of transfer rumors to cover. So let’s take a spin with through the Liverpool rumor mill.
We begin with the Reds hot on the trail for a kid who has been hailed “the next Neymar.” So you know, no pressure or anything, on 17-year-old Talles Magno.
His club is Vasco da Gama, in the Brazilian Serie A, and he’s a regular in the U17 national side. The Daily Mirror is the source of this narrative and they write that Magno “can play a role similar to that of Roberto Firmino at Anfield.”
The Reds reportedly face competition from Benfica for his services.
Elsewhere, when it comes to transfer talk items, it’s almost always about a club scouting and pursuing a player, not the other way around. It’s about a recruiting effort, although many times the interest is very mutual. Here, it’s all about the player wanting the club to get him.
Wolfsburg striker Wout Weghorst has been very open about his love for the Merseyside club before, but this time, well, he just took it up a notch.
“I always found Liverpool very special,” Weghorst said to Goal and DAZN.
“I still get goosebumps from ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. There are other great English clubs too, and I always liked Milan because so many Dutch played there.
“I am ambitious and want to get ahead. Maybe at some point play at another club, whether in Germany or in England? But at the moment it is still far away. I feel good and try to achieve the maximum here.”
Nothing wrong with having a dream, and being straight-forward about what that dream is.
The 27-year-old is in the Bundesliga, having moved over from the Eredivisie’s AZ Alkmaar in 2018.
As the Bundesliga restarts tomorrow, he has 33 goals and 12 assists in 70 matches so far with Die Wolfe (The Wolves).
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for Chicago Tribune.com, on Twitter and his cat on Instagram.