Liverpool Eye Ousmane Diomande as Nottingham Forest Deal Stalls

Liverpool are circling.

With Nottingham Forest’s move for Ousmane Diomande suddenly stuck in the mud, the Sporting Lisbon defender has slipped back into play – and Liverpool are being tipped to pounce.

Forest deal stalls at the finish line

Forest thought they had him. The 22-year-old centre-back, long linked with some of Europe’s biggest clubs, had been lined up as a flagship signing for their summer window.

At the end of July, BBC Sport reported that Forest were “close to completing” a deal with Sporting for Diomande. The framework was there, the optimism was real, and in Portugal the expectation was that the move would go through.

On Wednesday, A Bola went as far as to describe the transfer as “practically finalised”. For Forest, it would have been a powerful statement: a highly rated, ball-playing defender from one of Europe’s sharper talent factories, secured ahead of richer, more glamorous rivals.

Then the brakes went on.

By Thursday, a separate report claimed the deal had collapsed. On Friday, A Bola rowed back from its earlier certainty and detailed the fault line: not the fee itself, but how and when it would be paid.

According to the Portuguese outlet, Sporting want a fixed fee of no less than €40m, with bonuses potentially taking the package to €45m, plus a percentage of any future capital gain. The clubs had effectively shaken hands on the overall amount. The payment schedule, though, became the sticking point and negotiations stalled.

The deal is not dead, A Bola stressed, but the fear of a breakdown is real. Forest still have work to do if they are to drag it over the line.

A window opens for Liverpool

That uncertainty has not gone unnoticed.

Liverpool’s summer has been relatively quiet in terms of first-team additions. Jeremy Jacquet and Victor Munoz have arrived, but the bulk of the noise around Anfield has focused on attacking targets, with reported interest in PSG pair Bradley Barcola and Ibrahim Mbaye.

Yet the squad’s fault lines are obvious. Centre-back options are stretched by injuries, and depth at full-back looks thin. For a club trying to reset under a new era while staying in the title conversation, that is a risk.

Into that gap steps Diomande.

Reporter Sebastien Vidal, writing on X, suggested Liverpool “could benefit from the failure of negotiations between Nottingham Forest and Sporting for Ousmane Diomande.” He noted that the Ivorian, valued at around €40m, “remains available and has long been on the Reds’ radar, as they look to bolster their central defense.”

The logic is clear. A 22-year-old international, comfortable on the ball, schooled in a Sporting side that asks its defenders to play, suddenly no longer on the verge of joining someone else. For recruitment departments, these are the moments that demand quick decisions.

Forest still have a seat at the table. Sporting still have their price. But in a market where elite central defenders rarely come free, any hesitation invites company – and Liverpool are rarely passive when a long-standing target drifts back within reach.