Exclusive: Liverpool more likely to sign Dayot Upamecano than Ibrahima Konate because of affordable release-clause

Liverpool will bring in a big money, high-level central defender in the summer.

That much has been made obvious by the club’s correspondents – but also because of the fact we’re not going to be making a permanent centre-back signing this January – rightly or wrongly.

Eder Militao of Real Madrid on loan for six months is being touted, which we at EOTK consider a no-brainer, but the links are currently spurious.

We do however have some solid information regarding the two Rb Leipzig defenders Liverpool are chasing, which was confirmed by the excellent Christian Falk yesterday. 

The German claimed both young Frenchman are on our radar for the summer, and after some digging, we discovered that Dayot Upamecano is far more likely to arrive than Ibrahima Konate – for one simple reason: his release-clause.

At the end of this season, any club in Europe can acquire Upamecano for £37m, while Konate does not have such an easy buy-out clause and would therefore require much trickier negotiation.

One stumbling block of course could be Rb Leipzig’s insistence that the release-clause is paid in full. This is what happened six months back when Liverpool wanted Timo Werner, but preferred to pay in instalments, while Chelsea were happy to pay the money up front.

You’ll remember our payment strategy for Diogo Jota and Thiago also involved spreading the cost over the five years of their contracts – protecting our finances in the short-term.

So while our source tells us Upamecano is rated more highly than Konate at this stage, Liverpool may have to pay his very reasonable release-clause upfront – which could be a stumbling block later this year.

For now though, we just hope we can get a temporary deal for Militao over the line.

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