Liverpool's Next £100m Gamble: Mamadou Sangare
The £100m footballer used to be a unicorn. Now it’s just the going rate for anyone remotely close to elite.
Not long ago, that fee was reserved for the absolute peak of the game. The idea of Liverpool smashing through that barrier once, never mind twice in the same summer, would have sounded like fantasy.
They did it anyway. Florian Wirtz. Alexander Isak. Two statement signings, two six-year deals, two huge bets on the future.
Have they justified it yet? Not really. Not fully.
Both have shown flashes, both have hinted at the ceiling that persuaded Liverpool to write those cheques, but neither has consistently played like a £100m footballer. Not yet. The club, though, didn’t sign them for a single season. They signed them to grow into the spine of the next great Liverpool side.
And under Andoni Iraola, that expectation only hardens. His task is clear: unlock Wirtz, unleash Isak, and succeed where Arne Slot could not. Liverpool have built a squad around high-end talent. Now they need that talent to explode.
But there’s another reality Liverpool will have to live with.
The £100m signing is no longer an exception. It’s the market.
This summer has underlined it in bold. Fees that would once have broken football now barely raise an eyebrow. Elliot Anderson moving for around £120m is just one of several deals that have stretched logic and sanity.
Liverpool are right in the middle of it. To land Bradley Barcola, they will have to cross that £100m line again. Another nine-figure arrival. Another player walking through the door with a price tag that weighs as much as the shirt.
And Barcola is unlikely to be the last.
The plan for this window is clear enough: reinforce the attack. Barcola on one side, and ideally another winger who can operate off the right. That’s the short term. Once that’s done, the gaze will inevitably drift back towards the middle of the pitch.
Because the midfield is shifting.
Trey Nyoni is earmarked as the future. Dominik Szoboszlai has extended his stay and is already being talked about as a likely captain next summer. Ryan Gravenberch is tied down long term as well.
But Curtis Jones has gone. Alexis Mac Allister’s future is uncertain. That’s a lot of minutes, a lot of structure, a lot of know-how potentially walking out of the engine room.
Long term, Liverpool will have to go back into the market there. Not for depth. For starters.
For a while, Adam Wharton looked like the obvious name. Young, composed, Premier League-proven, and with a profile that fits the club’s recruitment model almost perfectly. Many saw him as the next nine-figure project for the Anfield hierarchy.
Then the Premier League season kicked off. And in Brentford’s opener against Tottenham, another name crashed into the conversation.
Mamadou Sangare.
The Malian midfielder has been talked up for some time in Ligue 1 circles, the kind of player scouts rave about before the wider public catches on. Against Spurs, in front of a bigger audience, he showed exactly why.
He ran the game.
Sangare dominated the middle third, snapping into duels, eating up ground, and dictating the tempo. He delivered the assist for Brentford’s opener, then drove forward again to unleash the shot that led to their third goal on the rebound.
He wasn’t just busy. He was decisive.
Everywhere you looked, he seemed to be there – breaking up play, carrying the ball, linking with the forwards. The energy, the aggression, the ability to cover huge spaces without losing clarity on the ball: it all screamed one thing.
Iraola would love this player.
The way Sangare hunts, presses, and transitions feels tailor-made for the kind of high-octane football Liverpool are building towards. You could almost see him dropped straight into that red midfield, turning chaos into control and control back into chaos on command.
That’s why the idea suddenly feels so obvious.
If Liverpool are going to keep playing in the £100m bracket – and the market suggests they will have to – then Sangare has just announced himself as a prime candidate to be next in line.
The Brentford midfielder has arrived in the Premier League. The question now is simple: how long before Liverpool decide he has to arrive at Anfield too?
