Leicester City star Caglar Soyuncu’s former agent has tipped Liverpool to sign the Turkish international, who is also wanted by Barcelona.
As reported by AS, Mustafa Dogru, the former agent of Leicester City star Caglar Soyuncu, has tipped Liverpool to sign the 23-year-old defender, amid interest from the likes of Barcelona and Manchester City.
Soyuncu joined Leicester City in 2018. The Turkish defender hardly featured in his debut campaign with the Foxes, but has emerged as one of their top players in the ongoing campaign. Following the summer departure of Harry Maguire, the 23-year-old has slotted in seamlessly into the Leicester City defence.
Soyuncu has played a key role in the Foxes’ ascent to the third position in the Premier League table. His performances haven’t gone unnoticed, with reigning La Liga champions Barcelona taking an interest in the Premier League star.
The Catalans are in the market for a new central defender as Samuel Umtiti faces an uncertain future at Camp Nou. Moreover, with Gerard Pique not getting any younger, setting up a succession plan for the seasoned campaigner is something that Barcelona need to look at, at the earliest. To that end, the interest in Soyuncu makes total sense.
Soyuncu’s former agent, Mustafa Dogru has revealed that Barcelona have been monitoring the 23-year-old since 2016, when he was still plying his trade at Turkish outfit Altinordu. However, the young defender snubbed the Catalans in favour of a transfer to German club Freiburg.
“It is possible Caglar can go to play for Barcelona this summer,” he said. “Barca already wanted to sign him when he played for Altinordu. We have negotiated with them and they have presented a project. But we think that he should go to a team where he is a permanent starter, for him to develop properly. For this reason, we decided to accept the Freiburg proposal.”
While he claimed that Barcelona stand a chance of signing Soyuncu, Dogru went on to add that Liverpool are the only club that have the power to sign him at the moment in the Premier League. “I think only Liverpool have the power to sign Caglar Soyuncu in the Premier [League] because of his economic conditions,” he told AS.
Liverpool’s first-choice centre-back pairing is pretty much sorted in Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez. Apart from the two, Jurgen Klopp also has Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip to call upon, while youngsters such as Ki-Jana Hoever and Sepp van den Berg are also options.
There have been question marks over the future of Dejan Lovren at the club, with the Croat set to enter the final year of his contract. However, it does seem a tad unlikely that the Reds will be keen on bringing in a new centre-back this summer, at a point when they need to secure quality backup options for their first-choice attacking trio.
Apart from Barcelona, Soyuncu has attracted interest from Manchester City, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid as well. The report adds that the defender is valued at €50m. Given the amount of interest, it remains to be seen if he remains a Leicester player next season.
