Liverpool's Trincão Dilemma: Who Replaces Mohamed Salah?
Liverpool’s summer is already crowded with names, numbers and scenarios, but one question keeps cutting through the noise: who replaces Mohamed Salah?
The club are braced for another rebuild, the kind of calculated overhaul that has underpinned every serious title tilt of the past decade at Anfield. Andoni Iraola will want to run the rule over his squad in pre-season, but by the time the friendlies are done, the decisions must be ruthless. Who stays. Who goes. Who arrives to drag this attack into its next era.
The problem is obvious. The market knows it, the Premier League knows it, and so do Liverpool’s rivals: everyone is shopping in the same aisle.
A race against Saudi money
On the right wing, Liverpool are exposed. The lingering hope that Salah might perform a late U-turn has faded. Federico Chiesa and Jeremie Frimpong are on the books as options out wide, but Chiesa could yet be on his way out, and Frimpong is not a like-for-like heir to the Egyptian’s throne. Victor Muñoz can fill in from the right, but his best work comes slicing in from the left.
Into that gap steps a familiar name: Francisco Trincão.
According to A Bola, Liverpool have only a narrow window if they want to move for the Sporting forward. The clock is ticking because Al Ahli are already at the negotiating table.
The Saudi club’s pursuit is active and serious. Sporting have set their price: between €50 million and €60 million. Al Ahli have tried to drag that down, testing the waters with an initial approach that effectively put €45 million on the table, even before a formal bid. Sporting said no. The gap now? Just €5 million between what Al Ahli want to pay and what Sporting expect.
Negotiations are ongoing, described as slower than Atlético Madrid’s talks for Morten Hjulmand, but no less demanding. Sporting are holding their line. Al Ahli, led on the recruitment side by Portuguese sporting director Rui Pedro Braz, are pushing to lower it. They have already spent €22 million on attacking midfielder Eduard Spertsyan from Krasnodar, yet their interest in Trincão, now 27, has not cooled.
Liverpool, watching this unfold, are in a familiar position: either step into the fight or watch a long-term target disappear into the Saudi project.
The right profile at the right time
Strip away the noise and Trincão fits a clear tactical brief.
Iraola’s approach is not a carbon copy of Jürgen Klopp or Arne Slot, but there is a shared framework: intensity, verticality, forwards who can stretch defences and attack space. The difference lies in the details. Iraola wants his central forwards to break the last line, to threaten in behind and drift wide when needed, in the mould of Eli Junior Kroupi’s work across the 2025–26 campaign. Names like Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak would tick those boxes through the middle.
Out wide, though, the demands change. Iraola’s wingers must not only finish chances; they must also create them. Trincão did exactly that last season for Sporting: 13 goals, 18 assists. Those are not decorative numbers; they are the output of a player who can both unlock a defence and deliver the final touch.
He is left-footed, operating from the right, cutting in to combine and shoot – stylistically, it is as close as Liverpool are likely to get to a Salah template without entering the stratosphere of impossible fees. At 26, he sits in that sweet spot between experience and upside, battle-tested but not yet on the downslope.
For a club trying to rewire its attack without losing its identity, that matters.
Decision time at Anfield
Liverpool cannot sign everyone on their shortlist. They do, however, have to decide what they want this front line to be.
If Iraola’s Liverpool are to remain a title threat, the right side cannot be a patchwork solution. It must be a weapon. The manager’s system leans heavily on wide forwards who can live on the ball, hurt teams inside and outside, and shoulder responsibility in big moments. Trincão’s numbers and profile suggest he can carry that load.
But the market will not wait. Al Ahli are already in the room with Sporting, haggling over the final €5 million. Once that gap closes, Liverpool’s chance is gone.
The question is no longer whether Trincão fits. It’s whether Liverpool are prepared to move now, while the door is still ajar, or accept that one of the most Salah-like options on the market will be lighting up a different league this season.
