Liverpool's Next Gamble: Matias Soule as the New Salah?

Liverpool once gambled on a misunderstood winger from Serie A and changed the course of the club’s modern history. The question now is whether they have the courage to do it again.

When Mohamed Salah arrived from Roma in 2017, he did not come draped in inevitability. He came with baggage. A Chelsea misfire. A reputation that lagged behind his numbers. A player many in England thought they already knew – and had already judged.

Liverpool ignored that noise. They looked at the data, the running power, the movement, the relentlessness of his final season in Rome. They saw a forward whose output screamed “elite” while the wider market shrugged. They backed their conviction.

From his first league fixture in red, the doubts evaporated. Salah scored, then scored again, then kept scoring until he had rewritten club and Premier League record books. He departs Anfield as one of Liverpool’s greatest footballers and one of the most prolific forwards the English game has seen.

None of that was preordained. It was the reward for spotting value where others saw risk.

Now Liverpool stand at a similar crossroads. Salah has gone. The right flank, once the most predictable source of goals in the league, suddenly looks like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit. And the market, at precisely the moment they need clarity, is a mess.

The pool of top-level right wingers is shallow. Prices are inflated. Targets are slipping away. Yan Diomande choosing Paris Saint-Germain felt like a punch to the plans, leaving Liverpool’s recruitment team scanning a landscape that offers more compromise than inspiration.

Amid that uncertainty, one name keeps nudging its way into the conversation: Matias Soule.

On the face of it, the comparison with Salah feels bold. The context is different, the stakes are different, and Liverpool are no longer the hunters trying to climb back to the summit – they are a club desperate to stay there. Yet the echoes are hard to ignore.

Soule, an Argentine playmaker capable of operating across the line behind the striker, has just produced a season that should have clubs queuing around the block. His numbers stand out, especially for a player who prefers that right-sided berth. In terms of value delivered from the flank, very few young attackers matched him last year.

Only a tiny group of under-24s – Lamine Yamal, Maghnes Akliouche and Dango Ouattara – could say they provided similar certainty of contribution from wide areas. Those names are being spoken about as jewels of the next generation. Soule, though, sits in a different category: productive, versatile, and, crucially, available.

Roma are open to a sale. Reports in Gazzetta dello Sport suggest that around €40 million would be enough to do a deal. In a market where ordinary wide players are attracting extraordinary fees, that figure jumps off the page.

At 23, Soule is entering the phase where potential should harden into end product. He can drift in off the right, operate centrally, or slide over to the left if needed. He offers tactical flexibility, age on his side and a statistical profile that hints at a ceiling far higher than the current perception around his name.

And still, the scramble for his signature has not started. No bidding war. No daily headlines. No frenzy.

That is where the Salah parallel becomes impossible to ignore. Back then, Liverpool saw something the rest of the market undervalued. They trusted their model over the mood. They believed a player’s reputation could be wrong.

Soule feels like that kind of test again. A winger whose output shouts louder than his brand. A player who might be one big move away from exploding into the top tier.

No one should expect a replica of Salah. Those heights belong to a tiny handful of players in any era. But no one expected Salah to become Salah either.

The opportunity is there: a 23-year-old right-sided creator, undervalued, available, and sitting in a price bracket that looks like a throwback in today’s market.

Liverpool once built an era by trusting that profile. Do they still have the nerve to do it now?