Liverpool has played its last game until the new year. It will have to wait to find out if it will end 2023 on top of the league — it’s a possibility, after Arsenal fell to a 2-0 defeat against West Ham, but Mikel Arteta’s men will have another chance to at least temporarily claim first place when it makes the short trip to Fulham on New Year’s Eve.
By the time Liverpool hosts Newcastle the following day, transfer talk will have amped up to a new level. After all, as of January 1, clubs can make alterations to their squads, something the Reds will have to consider carefully as it approaches the run-in of a potentially surprising title challenge.
But as well as possible incomings, there’s the chance of departures as well. Liverpool is expected to reconsider some loans, with Nat Phillips likely to be farmed out somewhere else after the Celtic move failed to produce much game time, and permanent sales for certain players are not entirely out of the frame either.
To that end, one star has supposedly been offered to Barcelona. Elsewhere on the continent, a former Liverpool player is making his way in coaching (no, not Xabi Alonso), and Borussia Dortmund has reportedly taken note. Here is the Liverpool.com take on some of the biggest stories around European football today ahead of the transfer window opening.
Barcelona ‘offered’ Thiago Alcântara
Barcelona could engineer a surprising return for Thiago Alcântara. Before making the move to Bayern Munich, the midfielder amassed 68 league appearances for the Catalans over four trophy-laden seasons.
A return to Camp Nou has been mooted for a while, although many have theorized any potential move would materialize in the summer, when the cash-strapped club could secure the world-class operator for no transfer fee. But amid a season-ending injury for Gavi, Más Que Pelotas claims that an approach for Thiago could come in January.
The claim is actually that Thiago has been ‘offered’ to Barcelona ahead of the winter transfer window. It’s unclear whether any such offer, if it is genuine, has come from Liverpool or from the player’s representatives.
Nuri Şahin courted as Dortmund coach
Nuri Şahin certainly isn’t best remembered as a Liverpool player. He showed potential in flashes at Anfield, but Brendan Rodgers never got the best from him, and his loan from Real Madrid was cut short after just six months to engineer a return to Borussia Dortmund.
That’s the club with which he is most closely associated and Jürgen Klopp, at the time in charge of Dortmund, was a big fan. But after finishing there, he moved on to Werder Bremen, and then Antalyaspor in Turkey — where he has been the manager since 2021.
However, Borussia Dortmund could now be eyeing up a return. According to Ertan Süzgün, the Bundesliga side is keen to appoint Şahin as an assistant to Edin Terzić, with a view to the one-time Liverpool midfielder taking over as head coach as early as next season.
