Liverpool have attempted to sign current Chelsea stars Diego Costa and Willian before the duo joined the London club. According to the Daily Telegraph, the duo was approached by Liverpool, but they snubbed the Merseyside club and opted to move to the Blues instead.
It is believed that the terms Liverpool offered the players were as good as what Chelsea offered, but somehow, they could not persuade them to choose Anfield.
The approach was made when Costa and Willian were at Atletico Madrid and Shakhtar Donetsk respectively.
Willian joined Chelsea in 2013 and has since made 166 appearances for the club in all competitions and has scored 26 goals for the Blues. Liverpool have approached him when he was at Shakhtar but the player eventually moved to Russian outfit Anzhi Makhachkala in 2012. One and a half years later, he made his move to Chelsea in the January window of 2013 for £30m fee and has been a constant figure in the Chelsea set-up.
Costa, on the other hand, joined Chelsea in 2014 after the club triggered a release clause of £32 million and announced on July 1, 2014, that the player would be joining them soon.
On signing, Costa said,
“I am very happy to sign for Chelsea. Everybody knows it is a big club in a very competitive league, and I am very excited to get started in England with a fantastic coach and team-mates. Having played against Chelsea last season I know the high quality of the squad I am joining”
Chelsea were stronger than Liverpool back in 2014 and the Reds had narrowly fallen short of winning the league title in 2013/14. They were agonisingly close and it was a heartbreak season. The goal scoring beast that season, Luis Suarez left the club in the summer of 2014 and joined Barcelona to team up with Lionel Messi and Neymar.
Liverpool would certainly have been desperate to replace Suarez with a striker of the same quality as the Uruguayan. It surely was a huge hole left by Suarez and Costa would have been a perfect buy from Brendan Rodgers, the then Liverpool boss.
Hopefully, Klopp could make Liverpool a successful club again and these missed transfers wouldn’t be too much to handle if success follows.
