Mac Allister Linked to Madrid as Iraola Aims to Retain Liverpool's Stars
Andoni Iraola knows exactly what happens when you manage a club like Liverpool and one of your midfielders has just starred at a World Cup. The phone calls start, the rumours swell, and the word “Madrid” appears in every other sentence.
Alexis Mac Allister still has two years left on his contract at Anfield, yet his name keeps circling around Spain as a possible target. Iraola is not blind to it. He just has no intention of letting his World Cup finalist go.
“I think Alexis has been one of the best players of the club last year and has done a very good World Cup,” the Liverpool manager said on tour. For him, the logic is simple: big clubs chase big performers. “It is normal that other clubs want our best players, our good players, it always happens in other markets. But I want to, also as other clubs want, I want to keep my good players.”
That last line cuts to the heart of Liverpool’s summer. Interest is expected. Sales are not guaranteed.
Mac Allister is due to rejoin the squad after a much-needed break following his run to the World Cup final with Argentina. His return will be a major boost on Merseyside, where Iraola is trying to rebuild the structure of a team that has lost some serious weight in the dressing room.
Because while he fights to keep his core intact, the holes are obvious. Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konate have all departed, stripping Liverpool of experience, leadership and reliability in three key areas of the pitch. It has forced Iraola into a blunt assessment of where his squad stands.
There is no dressing this up. Liverpool need players.
“There are obvious situations where we need to sign players,” he admitted. “Winger for example, we definitely need to sign a winger, but there are other situations where we will have to analyse what the market gives you, what is the cost, how we also see the players we have.”
The wide areas top the list. Losing Salah alone would have triggered a rethink. Losing him and Robertson at the same time has turned it into a full-scale reconstruction job down both flanks. The recruitment team know it; Iraola keeps repeating it. A winger is non-negotiable.
He will not put a number on how many new faces might arrive. “I think it is difficult to say a number. When the market is open, you have to be always open to new options to improve the squad,” he said, leaning on the reality of a window that can change in a day with one phone call or one injury.
And injuries are already shaping his plans. Liverpool’s depth is stretched by lingering fitness problems in “tricky positions”, as Iraola describes them. These are players he trusts, players he wants to lean on, but they are not yet ready to train at full tilt.
“We have some tricky positions where we have injured players that we trust, but it is still not the ideal situation, so it will depend on a lot of things,” he explained. Translation: the speed of those recoveries could decide whether Liverpool move aggressively in the final weeks of the window or hold their nerve.
All of this is playing out thousands of miles from Anfield. The Reds are currently in the United States on their Premier League pre-season tour, a crucial block of time for Iraola to stamp his ideas onto a squad in transition.
The American leg is not just about fitness. It is a live laboratory. New signings Jeremy Jacquet and Victor Munoz are being folded into the group, tested in different roles and partnerships, while the younger players are being pushed hard to show whether they belong in the first-team picture or need a loan to grow.
Fixtures against Sunderland, Leeds United and Wrexham will not define Liverpool’s season, but they will shape Iraola’s thinking. Performances, not just results, will inform who stays, who goes and where the next signing must land.
Somewhere in that timeline, Mac Allister will walk back through the door, World Cup miles still in his legs but responsibility waiting for him. His manager has made it clear: Liverpool want to build around players like him, not sell them off to the highest bidder.
The market will test that resolve soon enough.
