Liverpool Targeting Darwin Núñez Reunion Amid Squad Rebuild
Liverpool’s summer of upheaval shows no sign of slowing. Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson have already walked away as club legends at the end of the 2025/26 season. Ibrahima Konaté looks set to follow, seemingly bound for Real Madrid.
Into that churn steps a familiar name.
Núñez, the unfinished story
Darwin Núñez, once the headline signing of the Jurgen Klopp reboot in 2022, could be on his way back to Anfield — this time for nothing. No fee. No gamble on potential. Just a free agent trying to restart a career that never quite matched its price tag.
According to TEAMtalk, the Uruguayan has been offered to a select group of clubs, and Liverpool are firmly involved in the conversation. Benfica, the club that first propelled him into the elite market, are also expected to challenge for his signature. There are even whispers in Spain that Núñez has already given the green light to a Liverpool return.
If that proves true, it would be one of the more intriguing homecomings of the summer.
Saudi detour, same old Darwin
Núñez left Liverpool for the Saudi Pro League, joining Al-Hilal at the start of the 2025/26 campaign. On paper, it looked like the classic reset: a big club, a dominant side, a chance to bully defences and rebuild confidence.
The numbers tell a different story.
He scored nine times in 24 appearances before being cut from the squad due to foreign player limits. His last outing for Al-Hilal came in February, when he struck twice in a 2-1 AFC Champions League Elite win over Al-Wahda. Shortly after, his contract was mutually terminated.
The finishing issues that haunted him in England did not vanish in the desert heat. In league play he scored six goals from a hefty 11.48 xG, a familiar gap between promise and payoff.
Liverpool fans have seen this film before. Under Klopp, Núñez was a chaos engine who bent games around his movement but repeatedly left goals on the table. In the 2023/24 Premier League season he hit 11 league goals yet racked up 27 Big Chances Missed. The year before: nine goals, 20 Big Chances Missed.
He was an xG magnet. Just not a ruthless one.
Iraola’s dilemma – and opportunity
Now Andoni Iraola walks into Anfield with holes all over his squad. The Spaniard’s first season is likely to be dominated by repairs: patching up what went wrong at the end of the Klopp era and the brief, troubled tenure of Arne Slot. Salah gone. Robertson gone. Konaté on the brink. The spine needs reinforcing, the attack even more so.
Depth in the forward line is thin, and Iraola’s game model demands relentless running, vertical threat and constant movement off the ball. On that front, Núñez fits. He stretches defences, he presses, he never stops offering a run in behind.
The question has never been about volume of chances. It has always been about the final touch.
From Liverpool’s perspective, the equation looks different this time. Núñez once arrived as a marquee investment, a statement of intent. Now he could walk back through the Shankly Gates on a free transfer, a rotational option rather than a guaranteed starter, his value measured not against a huge fee but against the squad’s need for energy and unpredictability.
For Iraola, a no-cost forward who generates chances by sheer force of movement is tempting. Even if the conversion rate remains erratic, those missed chances still come from dangerous positions created by his runs and aggression. In a long season, with a squad in transition, that chaos can tilt tight games.
A second act at Anfield?
Núñez is currently weighing his options ahead of a summer move. Benfica lurk, sentimental and logical at once. Liverpool, though, offer something different: the chance to rewrite a narrative that never fully settled, in a stadium that both groaned at his misses and roared at his relentlessness.
He left as an enigma. He could return as a calculated risk.
If Liverpool do bring him back, it will not be as the centrepiece of a project, but as a weapon off the bench or a rotation starter in a leaner, more pragmatic era. An Iraola team built on intensity could yet find room for a forward who lives on the edge of control, forever one touch away from chaos or catharsis.
In a summer defined by departures, Liverpool may soon turn to a very familiar face to help launch the next version of themselves. The only real unknown is whether Darwin Núñez’s second act at Anfield finally delivers the finish his numbers have always promised.
