Liverpool Eye Ousmane Diomande Amid Nottingham Forest Deal Stalemate
Liverpool are watching the Ousmane Diomande saga at Nottingham Forest with growing interest – and the door may just have swung open for them.
Forest deal stalls at the finish line
For weeks, Forest have treated Diomande as a flagship target, the kind of signing that would underline their ambition and turn a few heads across the Premier League. The 22-year-old Sporting Lisbon defender has already been on the radar of several major clubs in England and Europe, so getting him would have been a statement.
At the end of July, BBC Sport reported that Forest were “close to completing” a deal with Sporting. The outlines were there, the expectation was building, and it looked like a matter of when, not if.
Then the deal started to creak.
On Wednesday, Portuguese outlet A Bola reported that Forest had made progress and that an agreement for Diomande was “practically finalised”. It sounded like the final details were being tied up.
Within 24 hours, the tone changed. A separate report on Thursday claimed the deal had collapsed. By Friday, even A Bola’s own update accepted that negotiations had hit serious trouble.
The problem is not the fee itself. A Bola detailed the situation clearly: Sporting want a fixed €40m, with bonuses potentially pushing the package to €45m, plus a percentage of any future capital gain. Those numbers, according to the outlet, had been agreed. The flashpoint lies in how and when that money is paid.
“Disagreements over the payment terms from the English club to the Alvalade club were the cause of the stalled negotiation round,” A Bola reported, adding that while the outcome is currently “feared”, there is still a possibility that the two clubs find a way back to an agreement.
For Forest, that means work still to do. For Liverpool, it means an opportunity.
Liverpool lurking for defensive reinforcements
Liverpool’s summer has been relatively quiet in terms of first-team arrivals. Jeremy Jacquet and Victor Munoz have come in, but the club’s main energy has been directed towards attacking targets, with PSG pair Bradley Barcola and Ibrahim Mbaye heavily linked.
Yet the squad sheet tells its own story. Centre-back options are thin because of injuries, and there is a clear vulnerability at full-back. For a team with Liverpool’s ambitions, that is a dangerous way to step into a long season.
So the idea of moving for a 22-year-old central defender, long admired by the club, starts to make a lot of sense.
Reporter Sebastien Vidal summed up the situation on X, suggesting Liverpool could “benefit from the failure of negotiations between Nottingham Forest and Sporting for Ousmane Diomande.” He noted that the Ivorian, valued at around €40m, “remains available and has long been on the Reds’ radar, as they look to bolster their central defense.”
The ingredients are all there: a highly rated young defender, a selling club locked in a stand-off over payment terms, a buying club in Forest struggling to close, and a heavyweight like Liverpool waiting with both the need and the financial muscle to step in.
Whether Liverpool choose to act is another matter. But if they do, Forest may find that the most painful part of this transfer is not the negotiation with Sporting – it’s watching a long-term target walk out of their grasp and straight into Anfield.
