There is a comparison with Harry Maguire – for Southampton, read Leicester, for £75m, read £80m – but in profile, not performance. Virgil van Dijk, signed for a supersized fee but, like Ferguson's success stories such as Michael Carrick, Teddy Sheringham, Rio Ferdinand and Yorke, from a club between fifth and 10th in the Premier League, one of its best centre-backs. Meanwhile, Liverpool have first-rate players acquired from second-rank clubs, in Roma and Monaco and Porto.Īnd now Liverpool have the emblematic successes: Andy Robertson, relegated with Hull, has played in three Champions League finals in four years and ranks as one of the finest left-backs in world football, as Evra did a decade earlier. Since Ferguson’s retirement, they have directed more bids to bigger names at Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus. They would often buy brilliantly from the second or third tier of continental clubs - Patrice Evra from Monaco, Nemanja Vidic from Spartak Moscow, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ji-sung Park from PSV Eindhoven, Ronaldo from Sporting Lisbon. United rarely recruited anyone already established as the continent’s best instead, they elevated them to that bracket. Mane and Mohamed Salah sustained an impact for longer than Yorke, but there are similarities. Dwight Yorke joined from an Aston Villa side that had just finished seventh and when Ferguson’s assistant Brian Kidd infamously thought they should sign John Hartson instead he scored 29 goals in his debut year when he was one of the outstanding players in Europe. They used to do likewise under Alex Ferguson. The combination of coaching and culture, the environment and astute recruitment means a host of players have reached a new level under Klopp. The Senegalese ended his Anfield career touting himself for the Ballon d’Or. Last week, Klopp noted that Sadio Mane did not always start for Southampton when they played Liverpool.
Jurgen Klopp confessed the former Wolves winger was a better player than he realised when he signed him to put it another way, however, Jota has improved from the time he was an inconsistent, sporadically deadly presence for a team who finished seventh. However, his prolific streak is such that he has been given a pay rise and an extended contract.
Jota, meanwhile, will be deprived of the chance to complete a hat-trick of scoring trips to Old Trafford by injury. Ronaldo was in the right place to realise his considerable potential. Five years later, he was rewarded for a 42-goal season with the Ballon d’Or such progress, as his contemporary Ricardo Quaresma’s career showed, was not inevitable. Ronaldo joined United as a teenage talent with five career goals to his name. In their own way, however, each was a success story of his time.
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