Liverpool's Next Potential Star: Matias Soule

Liverpool stand at a familiar crossroads. The last time they were here, they walked away with Mohamed Salah.

When the Egyptian arrived from Roma in 2017, he was not the unstoppable force he later became. He was the winger who hadn’t cracked it at Chelsea, the forward whose numbers in Italy looked better than the reputation that followed him back to England. Liverpool bet that the data told the truth and the narrative was wrong.

They won that bet in spectacular fashion.

From his very first outing in red, Salah made the doubts look absurd. Goals, assists, records – he piled them up at a pace that turned a calculated gamble into one of the greatest signings in the club’s modern history. He leaves Anfield as a legend, a giant of English football and a benchmark for what smart recruitment can deliver.

Now his departure has ripped open a hole on the right-hand side of Liverpool’s attack. And the market, bluntly, is a mess.

The pool of top-level right wingers is shallow. The few obvious names are either locked down by their clubs or priced into fantasy territory. Yan Diomande choosing Paris Saint-Germain has only sharpened the sense that Liverpool are fishing in a pond that’s already been trawled.

This is where the Salah lesson should echo loudest.

Matias Soule, currently on Roma’s books, looks like the kind of undervalued asset Liverpool used to pounce on. His output last season put him in rare company among young right-sided attackers. In terms of the value he brought – production, versatility, influence in the final third – very few under 24 could match him. Only Lamine Yamal, Maghnes Akliouche and Dango Ouattara operated at a similar level with real consistency.

Those three are either untouchable or prohibitively expensive. Soule is neither.

Roma are open to a sale. Reports from Gazzetta dello Sport indicate that a bid of around €40m could be enough to get him. In a market where raw, unpolished potential routinely goes for far more, that figure jumps off the page.

Soule is 23, comfortable across the line behind the striker, and already delivering numbers that outstrip the conversation around him. That mismatch – production versus perception – is exactly what Liverpool exploited when they went for Salah. Back then, they trusted their analysis over the noise. They believed they could unlock a ceiling others had missed.

This is not to say Soule will become the next Salah. Those heights are almost impossible to replicate, and no serious recruitment team would build a plan on the assumption that lightning will strike twice in quite the same way.

But the pattern is hard to ignore. A right-sided attacker at Roma. Strong underlying numbers. A strangely muted market. A price that looks, by current standards, like a bargain.

Liverpool need a solution on the right. The obvious options are scarce, the elite ones are eye-wateringly expensive, and the clock is ticking on a squad that still expects to compete for major honours. Soule represents something different: a chance to lean back into the club’s old strength, to trust the data, see beyond the reputation and back their own conviction.

They did it once, and it changed the modern history of the club.

Now the question is simple: with another potential steal staring them in the face, will Liverpool pull the trigger again?