Liverpool's Next Gamble: The Case for Matias Soule

Liverpool once bet the house on a winger whose reputation didn’t match his numbers. It changed the club’s modern history.

Now, with Mohamed Salah gone, a strangely similar opportunity is staring them in the face.

Remembering the first Salah gamble

Salah did not walk into Anfield as a nailed-on superstar. He arrived with baggage. A failed spell at Chelsea, doubts about his physicality in England, questions over whether his eye-catching stats at Roma would translate to the Premier League.

Liverpool went against the noise. They trusted the data, trusted the eye test, trusted their belief that his underused talent could explode in the right system.

It did. Instantly.

From his first competitive outings, Salah tore into defences and never really eased off. He departs as one of Liverpool’s greatest players of all time and one of the most prolific forwards English football has seen. That outcome was not inevitable. It was the result of a club willing to see beyond reputation.

That mindset matters again now.

A brutal market and a glaring hole

Salah’s exit has left a void on the right that is as emotional as it is tactical. Liverpool need a new right-sided attacker. The timing could hardly be worse.

The current market for right wingers is thin, overpriced, and, in some cases, simply underwhelming. Targets have slipped away. Yan Diomande choosing Paris Saint-Germain has left Liverpool scrambling for alternatives in a department where genuine value is almost non-existent.

Almost.

The Soule question

Enter Matias Soule.

The Argentine, currently at Roma, sits in that intriguing category: a player whose output tells one story and whose reputation tells another. His numbers last season put him in rare company among young right-sided attackers.

There were not many right wingers who delivered his level of value. Only a handful of under-24s – Lamine Yamal, Maghnes Akliouche and Dango Ouattara – could match that kind of certainty in their contributions. That is elite company for a player who, outside of specialist circles, barely dominates the conversation.

Soule is 23, comfortable across the line behind the striker, and entering the phase of his career where the right move can define a decade. Unlike many of his statistical peers, he is actually on the market.

The price of potential

Roma are open to a sale. Reports in Gazzetta dello Sport indicate that a bid of around €40m would be enough to get a deal done.

In this market, for a versatile, productive 23-year-old attacker, that is not just reasonable. It is standout value.

No drawn-out auction, no absurd nine-figure fee, no need to talk yourself into a player whose profile doesn’t quite fit. Soule offers output, age, and availability in one package. And yet, there is no queue around the block. No frenzy. No obvious superclub tug-of-war.

That is where the Salah parallel becomes impossible to ignore.

Echoes of 2017

When Liverpool moved for Salah, the wider game did not erupt in panic. There was curiosity, not fear. Respect, not awe. Liverpool saw something others had undervalued.

Soule feels cut from a similar cloth. A winger whose potential seems to outstrip the way he is currently perceived. A player who might be one tactical fit, one coaching staff, one stadium away from a completely different status.

No one is saying he will touch Salah’s numbers. Very few players in the sport’s history have. But no one predicted Salah would hit those heights either when he stepped off the plane from Rome.

This is the point: Liverpool once built an era by trusting that a misread talent could become a phenomenon in their colours. Now they face another decision that carries the same kind of energy, if not the same level of certainty.

Do they lean into that instinct again?

In a market short on answers, Matias Soule looks like a question Liverpool cannot afford to ignore.