Seventy million pounds is the number doing the rounds in Spain again. According to a report in El Nacional carried by the Daily Mail on April 9, 2023, Liverpool are “preparing a £70 million offer” for Real Madrid midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni — the same fee Madrid paid Monaco for him the summer before.
The claim deserves its caveats. Jurgen Klopp’s side chased the France international before his move to the Spanish capital and, in the Spanish outlet’s telling, are now hunting the 23-year-old once more. Yet El Nacional itself reports the player has been “slower than expected” in adapting to life in Madrid, while also noting he is highly thought of within the club, whose hierarchy may simply refuse to let him go.
On the evidence, Madrid’s attachment is understandable. Tchouameni has impressed in his first season in Spain, collecting a Club World Cup winner’s medal along the way, and England supporters will remember the goal he scored against the Three Lions in the World Cup quarter final.
Why Liverpool Are Looking Again
The context is a club rebuilding its midfield after a dismal 2021/22 campaign. The Merseyside club thumped Manchester United 7-0 in March, then lost three matches in a row and followed that with a tame draw against Chelsea. They sat eighth in the table, 13 points off the Champions League places, with a home game against league leaders Arsenal next on the schedule.
Tchouameni is not the only name in the frame. Liverpool have been heavily linked with Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham, though competition from Real Madrid and Manchester City for that signature is intense. Whether the Anfield club can land either player is, on the reporting available, very much an open question.
Any deal’s shape is in Madrid’s hands before it is in anyone else’s. The Spanish club paid a premium for the midfielder barely a season ago, watched him win silverware within months, and, on El Nacional’s own account, still considers him part of the project’s core. Sellers with that posture set prices rather than accept them, and the last price on record for this particular player was £70 million. A suitor returning so soon after missing out the first time must therefore arrive with both the money and a convincing sporting project, and Liverpool’s eighth-place league position makes the second half of that equation harder to argue.
The encouraging part for Liverpool, if the Spanish report holds, is that a pathway exists: the fee is known, the player is proven, and Madrid’s own account describes only patchy adaptation. The caution is equally plain. A club that rates a young midfielder highly rarely sells him two summers running, and no bid has yet been lodged. For now, this remains a story about intent, not a transfer.
