Yevhen Konoplyanka was reduced to tears when his dream move to Liverpool was left shattered at the last minute.
The Ukrainian winger was playing for his boyhood club Dnipro at the time in 2014 and was one of Europe’s most exciting young players thanks to his exploits on the domestic and European stage.
His performances caught the eye of Liverpool who were enjoying a surprisingly fruitful season in their 2013/14 Premier League campaign which was spearheaded by the lethal partnership of Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge.
Despite a devastating forward line that also included the likes of Raheem Sterling and Philippe Coutinho, Reds boss Brendan Rodgers wanted even more firepower in his squad and decided to enter the January transfer window to look for reinforcements.
With just a month to secure a deal, the club settled on Konoplyanka after Mohamed Salah had joined Chelsea from Basel which was just three years before he eventually joined Liverpool. With a fee being agreed with Dnipro’s owner, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, as well as personal terms with the winger, the deal looked set to confirm.
However, the Ukrainian club pulled the plug on the transfer on Deadline Day which left the winger, 34, a blubbering mess. “I was crying,” Konoplyanka has since admitted in an interview with Weszlo. “A delegation of serious people from Liverpool came to Dnipropetrovsk. We ate dinner. ‘Deal done’, they said. They were to pay as much as [owner] Ihor Kolomoyskyi wanted.”
He said that he received messages from Martin Skrtel and Steven Gerrard and he even begged Kolomoyskyi to push the transfer through but to no avail despite being offered £20million. “I had to go to Kolomoyskyi. ‘Please, please, please, let me go, I will make my dream come true’, I begged.”
Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre even flew to Ukraine to secure a deal but Kolomoyskyi delayed negotiations before spurning the Reds’ advances at the end of Deadline Day. Konoplyanka spent the next year and a half at Dnipro before leaving the club on a free transfer to Sevilla in 2015.
The 34-year-old most recently played for Romanian outfit CFR Cluj but was released this past week after playing just four games.
