Liverpool Pursue Yan Diomande as Salah's Heir

Liverpool are not just in the race for Yan Diomande – they are trying to blow everyone else off the track.

The club have marked the RB Leipzig and Ivory Coast winger as their chosen heir to Mohamed Salah, and they are acting like it. At 19, Diomande is already viewed as one of the most dangerous one-v-one wide players in the game, a winger who doesn’t just beat full-backs, he exposes them.

Anyone who watched Ivory Coast’s World Cup opener against Ecuador saw the full package. Up against Arsenal defender Piero Hincapie in the first half, Diomande went at him relentlessly and tore into him with the swagger of a player who knows exactly how good he is. That performance only sharpened the focus at Anfield.

Liverpool had already moved. David Ornstein revealed the club opened talks with Leipzig, a significant step given the German side’s stance. Leipzig do not want to sell and have set the bar high: a valuation in the region of €130m (£112m). It would take a bid around that figure to make them even consider cashing in.

That has not scared Liverpool. Nor, crucially, has it scared Diomande.

PSG are in the fight and, on paper, they are the kind of heavyweight Liverpool would normally expect to be jostling with in this market. Yet the early indications are that Diomande prefers a move to Merseyside, drawn by the idea of playing for Andoni Iraola and stepping straight into a clearly defined role in the attack.

Money matters, and here Liverpool are pushing hard. Fabrizio Romano has already stated that the Premier League side have put “important money” on the table in their attempt to land the teenager. Now, speaking on his YouTube channel, Romano has outlined why Liverpool currently hold the upper hand over PSG.

The first edge is simple: Liverpool are prepared to offer Diomande a bigger contract than the French champions. They are ready to outbid PSG on personal terms to get their man, a clear signal of how central they see him to their next attacking era.

The second advantage is structural. PSG, Romano explained, do not actually have a clear slot for Diomande unless they sell Bradley Barcola. And they are in no rush to do that.

“The battle is on between Liverpool and PSG,” Romano said. Liverpool, he explained, are not only ahead financially in what they are willing to pay the player, they are also operating without the kind of internal logjam PSG are wrestling with.

PSG are still waiting to see if a “right proposal” arrives for Barcola. Only then would a move for Diomande become straightforward. The whole thing hangs on the size and seriousness of bids for the French winger. If a major offer lands, PSG’s path to Diomande opens up. If it does not, they are likely to keep Barcola and continue with him.

And they are not desperate to sell. That matters. It means PSG’s pursuit of Diomande is conditional, reactive, and tied to another club’s willingness to pay for Barcola.

Liverpool, by contrast, are already moving. Behind the scenes, as Romano puts it, they are pushing. They know PSG remain very keen on Diomande, but they also know the French club are offering less at this stage.

So the situation is clear. A 19-year-old winger who shredded a World Cup full-back, a selling club who will only budge for enormous money, and two European giants locked in a duel – one ready to reshape its forward line around him, the other waiting for a domino to fall.

If Liverpool get this over the line, they are not just planning for life after Salah. They are trying to make sure that, when the next great Anfield winger arrives, he does so by choosing them over Paris.