Rumour Mongering: Is Liverpool’s Path To Pulisic Opening?

And if it does, would Liverpool even care?

It’s becoming increasingly likely that 20-year-old Christian Pulisic will leave the Ruhrgebiet and Borussia Dortmund in the near future. The American Wunderkind - if you can still use that appellation with respect to Pulisic at this point - has long been linked to English clubs, Liverpool among them, in part due to Jürgen Klopp’s prior association with Dortmund and with the player personally.

The latest rumours around this saga suggest that Pulisic’s current club are making plans for life without him. If true, it would be one of the clearest indications yet that we could be seeing Pulisic in a different shirt, perhaps as early as January 2019. Dortmund’s purported target and potential Pulisic replacement? None other than Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Thorgan Hazard, himself a recent focus of links to Liverpool.

Borussia Dortmund have approached Borussia Mönchengladbach about Thorgan Hazard, according to RMC Sport. #BVB #BMG

— Ronan Murphy (@swearimnotpaul) December 22, 2018

The question, of course, is whether this potential acquisition would actually smooth the path for Pulisic to arrive on Merseyside. Reports from Spain and from elsewhere have indicated that Dortmund might already have reached a provisional understanding with an English club over Pulisic’s transfer. However, the consensus seems to be that Chelsea is the rumoured destination. It’s an acquisition that would check several boxes for Maurizio Sarri’s project and for the London club, not to mention the player’s professional prospects themselves.

“Pulisic-to-Liverpool” is a hypothetical move that tends to elicit wildly vacillating sentiments from the Reds’ fanbase. At times, it’s spoken of as a must-happen scenario, regardless of the cost. At others, there has been absolute indifference and insistence that Pulisic is overrated for the purported transfer fee (likely north of £60m). The truth is likely somewhere in between. The odds are still quite good that Pulisic will go on to have quite an impressive career, even allowing for speed bumps in his development. At this point, it’s not clear that this will happen at Liverpool.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com