Liverpool thought they had the next Messi & Ronaldo, then he left for £0

Before Jurgen Klopp arrived, Liverpool supporters just wanted to see their team be competitive in the fight for Champions League qualification, year in, year out.

This is a proud and prestigious football club, one of the biggest worldwide, but it was a fallen giant despite the anomaly of that 2013/14 season, supercharged by the once-in-a-lifetime Luis Suarez.

Only, he wasn’t actually an unrepeatable kind of forward, for Mohamed Salah would arrive three years beyond the Uruguayan’s sale, and has forged a legacy for the ages.

Mohamed Salah has surpassed Luis Suarez

Salah might be the greatest Liverpool forward of the Premier League era. Sure, Suarez took a rather average team, fused together with the very spirit of Steven Gerrard and posted 31 goals and 13 assists across 33 top-flight fixtures.

Again, Robbie Fowler is a division great, while Fernando Torres’ time on Merseyside was unforgettable, almost indefinable in the connection he forged with the city. Michael Owen literally won the Ballon d’Or in 2001 while rising to prominence with the Anfield side.

No one compares to Salah though, whose unceasing brilliance over what will be eight years this summer has etched his name into eternal Premier League folklore. Journalist David Lynch has called him an “all-time great“, praise that echoes across the country.

Salah needs just 11 Premier League goals to surpass Thierry Henry and insinuate himself among the top seven goalscorers in the league’s history. The 32-year-old requires merely 20 strikes to overtake Sergio Aguero in the top five. The big-boy league.

Liverpool have been treated to a wondrous talent, one who spearheaded trophy-laden success throughout the Klopp era and might just have a definitive say in a similar fight under Arne Slot‘s wing this season.

It all could have been so different though. In that weird, bleak hinterland between Suarez’s exit and Klopp’s advent, Liverpool wanted to replace their all-powerful number nine with a new attacking talisman – and settled on Lazar Markovic.

Lazar Markovic was supposed to be Liverpool’s superstar

Farewell, Suarez. At least that £75m transfer fee can be put toward a thrilling rebuild that will set Liverpool up for an age at the highest echelon of English football, right?

Right?

It was a disaster of a window, though not without its (in hindsight) silver linings. How funny that Divock Origi, a £10m signing from Lille who was tasked with replacing Suarez in the aggregate, would score the win-settling goal in the Champions League final against Tottenham Hotspur, five years later, despite never really establishing himself as a high-scoring star.

For Markovic, no such luck. The young winger arrived from SL Benfica for a pretty hefty £20m fee, with correspondent James Pearce looking back at the transfer flop and saying: “He was rated as one of the most exciting young talents in Europe.”

His Liverpool career probably reached its apotheosis when he played a rather simple, Busquets-esque pass into Phil Coutinho’s vicinity against Southampton in 2015, who thus proceeded to dispatch one of the most awe-inspiring ranged strikes in the Reds’ Premier League history.

That, sadly, is the tale of the tape. Or rather, a fleeting bright moment bespeaking high footballing merit that sits alongside a sweep of struggle.

Markovic’s poignant failure is one of sadness, but it’s not unusual. Many a highly-touted prospect has been hurtled to the wayside upon stepping into the rigours of big-time football.

He featured 34 times for Liverpool throughout the 2014/15 season, posting three goals and one assist. His growth was stunted, however, and the now-30-year-old was loaned out to Fenerbahce the following campaign. Klopp arrived during this time and probably took one perfunctory glance at the Serbian’s file before eliminating him from contention.

Avram Grant, formerly of Chelsea and Markovic’s manager during his first stint at Partizan, even said this: “I can say that apart from Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Markovic is one of the best talents I’ve ever seen at 19 years of age.”

This gushing praise fell flat, sort of like a drunk in the rain.

Journalist Andy Brassel said that Liverpool’s young acquisition was a player of “rare talent”, but unfortunately it was so recherché that Markovic was unable to find it within himself. He toiled.

Throughout his maiden year, Markovic featured often, but that was all she wrote. One year after his arrival, he was discarded and thrown out on a series of loan moves that culminated in a permanent move to Fulham on a free transfer.

For a player who was of such ‘rare’ quality, indeed likened to Messi and Ronaldo, arguably the two greatest footballers in history, he quite heavily fell from a promising position and failed to pick himself back up.

Perhaps, in a way, this was the ‘OG’ Salah. A talented and electric forward with a growing sense of style and skill, capable of shouldering that Atlas burden that Suarez balanced on his back with such preternatural poise.

Supposed to be, in any case. Liverpool are hardly complaining now, not with one of the greatest forwards in modern history flourishing for their team.

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