With Liverpool likely in need of strengthening at centre-back in the not-too-distant future, Sporting Lisbon could be one possible port of call. The Reds have repeatedly been linked with a swoop for Goncalo Inacio in recent transfer windows while the ECHO in the past reported their admiration for his team-mate, Ousmane Diomande.
But should Liverpool actually ever sign either player, they will hope that they fare considerably better than the previous two times they have bought from Sporting Lisbon.
The Reds first turned to the Portuguese outfit in January 2012, snapping up Joao Carlos Teixeira in an £830,000 deal after he had impressed against the club in the 2011/12 NextGen Series.
However, the move almost fell through due to a back injury.
Once recovered, the playmaker, hailed as the ‘New Deco’, impressed at youth level and, despite an underwhelming loan move to Brentford during the first half of the 2013/14 season, made his Liverpool debut as a substitute in a 3-2 victory over Fulham in February 2014.
The following year, he would impress on loan in the Championship with Brighton & Hove Albion only to see his campaign ended prematurely by a broken foot.
And while it would take the appointment of Jurgen Klopp for Teixeira to be handed a first team look-in in 2015/16, it soon became clear that he would leave the club the following summer at the end of his contract.
Liverpool ended up pocketing £250,000 compensation when Teixeira joined FC Porto, having made only eight appearances for the club and scored only once. Yet that was still more of an impact than the second Sporting Lisbon player to move to Anfield.
It was August 2013 when former manager Brendan Rodgers completed a double deadline day swoop to land Mamadou Sakho from Paris Saint-Germain for £18m and a 20-year-old Tiago Ilori in a £7m deal from Sporting Lisbon. In doing so, he claimed to have sorted out the Reds’ backline for the next 10 years.
“I wanted to try to protect the present and the future of the club,” Rodgers said at the time. “Centre-halves are so hard to find. You look at some teams and they have ageing centre-halves because it is a struggle to get a really good one.
“We were fortunate in that two became available, one that we had been tracking for a year in Tiago Ilori, a young talent but who can be a big talent.
“He is 6ft 3in, super quick, power, can jump, and he just needs to adapt to the pace and physicality of the Premier League. He is one for the future, but he can be a really big talent.
