Liverpool have simply moved a step closer to appointing Jurgen Klopp’s successor after asserting Richard Hughes as the club’s new wearing director.
Hughes will officially join the Reds on June 1, when his contract as first team technical director at AFC Bournemouth comes to an end. But as the man tasked with identifying and appointing Liverpool’s subsequent manager, such a search will no longer be on hiatus in the interim.
After all, Fenway Sports Group’s new CEO of Football, Michael Edwards, used to be current at Old Trafford for Sunday’s FA Cup defeat to Manchester United in spite of it beforehand being proven that he won’t officially resign from his consultancy work with his personal company, Ludonautics, till June 1.
Hughes’ contacts ought to prove decisive, with onlookers quickly recognizing a substantial link between the 44-year-old and former Reds midfielder Xabi Alonso, who remains one of the favourites to be triumphant KloppHughes already boasts a properly relationship with Alonso’s agent and representatives – Inaki Ibanez of IDUB Global – after hiring Andoni Iraola last summer season for Bournemouth. The former Rayo Vallecano boss is represented by way of the identical group.
However, notwithstanding being the supporters’ favourite, Alonso is not the solely serious candidate. Sporting Lisbon’s Ruben Amorim, Brighton’s Roberto De Zerbi and Germany’s Julian Naglesmann are among those reportedly beneath consideration.
And in the case of De Zerbi, Hughes has tried to appoint him before. If now not for a delayed takeover at the Vitality Stadium, the Italian used to be lined up to exchange Scott Parker in August 2022, following the former England international’s outburst towards the club’s summer time transfer business after a 9-0 thrashing at Anfield at the palms of Liverpool.
Hughes’ love of Italian football, having grown up in the united states of america and started out his personal childhood career with Atalanta in the early nineties, naturally made him well-aware of De Zerbi’s credentials, most impressively with Sassuolo, lengthy before English football first began to ask, ‘who is he?!’
And that obsession with Serie A has already proven really useful at Anfield, with the Scot quietly playing a small position in Liverpool’s future pastimes of Mohamed Salah and Alisson Becker.
Bournemouth would end their first season again in the Premier League fifteenth below the stewardship of former Reds Under-23s assistant coach Gary O’Neil, who Hughes had played alongside at Portsmouth when he first met Edwards. Football is a small world, evidently, where the contacts you make be counted more than in most different fields. You can believe the familiar.
The midfield pair each impressed Edwards too as he grew shut to a core group of players who displayed a ardour for soccer properly past their very own playing careers. They each grabbed the interest of the Pompey evaluation group via no longer only looking for out information and clips of their personal performances, however also of Portsmouth’s upcoming opponents, as well as golf equipment from across the Premier League, Football League and overseas.
O’Neil is now impressing in charge of Wolves, while Bournemouth are taking part in a superb season underneath Iraola. While neither are tipped as Klopp successors, Hughes is posed to make the most of his contacts book once more. Be it Alonso, De Zerbi or an choice candidate, it will be captivating to see which route Liverpool’s managerial search takes when the time comes.
Edwards, Hughes and the next Reds supervisor will lead the club into a courageous new era, off the returned of the most successful period in the its Premier League history. Yet, as proven by the former’s return, it will perhaps be a case of distinctive however equal
