Moises Caicedo showed price growth

The most expensive deal in the history of the English Premier League (EPL) in the near future will be a deal in the center of which was a player whose existence a couple of years ago, few people knew. Liverpool, which lost some leaders of the middle line in the off-season, on the day of the start of the next championship of England, agreed on the transfer of 21-year-old Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo from Brighton worth £111 million. However, his offer could be interrupted by Chelsea.

The fact that Liverpool agreed with Brighton on the transfer of Moises Caicedo was reported by all the major British media resources. The agreement was confirmed by Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp. At a press conference before the club’s first game in the next English championship, in which he will meet Chelsea on Sunday, Klopp confirmed that “the deal has been agreed”. True, both the BBC and The Guardian specified that the intrigue in connection with it remains. According to them, another club has not completely abandoned the fight for Caicedo. They are just the closest rival of Liverpool. Sky Sports claims that the Ecuadorian himself “hesitated” over the choice on Friday. And some publications suggested that Chelsea were about to respond to the Liverpool offer with their own.

No matter how this struggle ends, it will not change the main thing. The purchase of Moises Caicedo will be the most expensive in the history of the English Premier League. All sources claim that Liverpool agreed to pay Brighton £111m for the Ecuadorian player, a £4m higher than the previous record. It was installed as part of the last winter transfer window by the same Chelsea, who at that time were feverishly buying up players on the market, not particularly caring about savings. Argentinean Enzo Fernandez, who played for Benfica, one of the heroes of last year’s World Cup in Qatar, cost the Londoners £107 million.

As for the current summer transfer window, only the transfer of Englishman Jude Bellingham from Borussia Dortmund to Real Madrid can compete on high prices with the future transfer of Moises Caicedo. According to Transfermarkt, the Madrid club spent €103 million on him. However, this is only the “basic” part of the transfer. A number of sources insist that, taking into account various bonuses, its total cost, it is possible, exceeds €130 million.

The biography of the player makes the story with Moises Caicedo doubly interesting. The history of football knows very little about such rapid rises in the price of football players.

A couple of years ago, Caicedo was an unknown young player from the Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle. In February 2021, he sold it to Brighton, which, one might say, specialized specifically in investing in non-obvious talents for a modest £4 million. Moreover, at first it seemed that Caicedo would take a long time to gain a foothold at the top European level. After moving to England, he did not go to the Brighton base, at best watching his official matches from the bench. And in August 2021, before the transfer window closed, the club loaned the midfielder, whom they didn’t really count on, to Belgian Berschot.

Moises Caicedo was lucky that Brighton suddenly faced a shortage of midfielders last season. Already in winter, the English team returned him from loan, and Caicedo took advantage of the chance perfectly. He broke into the base, opened the scoring with goals scored in England, and at the beginning of the previous season, experts already spoke of him as a cool footballer with a scarce role – a midfielder playing box-to-box, that is, in fact, all over the field, from the support zone to the front line.

The World Cup in Qatar at the end of last year only increased the quotes of Moises Caicedo. The Ecuador national team played it without brilliance, taking off after the group stage, but Caicedo himself deserved good reviews, showing a rather mature and energetic game and distinguished himself in a meeting with the Senegalese. Actually, after that championship, it became clear that there was a serious demand for the Ecuadorian from the giants, and his agents even circulated a statement on behalf of the football player, in which he admitted that he would like to leave Brighton in order to move to a higher caliber club.

True, at that time it was still not about the amounts of such an order that his buyer would have to pay for Moises Caicedo. But circumstances brought them up. Chelsea, who dreamed about him, as you know, suffered a crushing failure last season, finding himself in the championship outside the top ten. But for Liverpool, which was considered a dangerous competitor for the favorite Manchester City, it was unsuccessful. The final fifth place transparently hinted at the fact that the club needed at least a cosmetic personnel restructuring, adding freshness to the squad. And it was made especially relevant by the losses suffered by the club in the offseason. Teams from Saudi Arabia lured away two important players for Liverpool at once – Fabinho and Jordan Henderson. Moreover, they closed the central section in the middle line. In part, the Liverpool filled the gap back in June – again thanks to the ability of Brighton to “upgrade” the players. Liverpool bought Argentinian Alexis McAllister from him for £35m, a figure that was in keeping with Jurgen Klopp’s principles: he has always sharply criticized overly expensive transfers, considering them more harmful than useful. But in the case of Moises, Caicedo Klopp had to give up principles.

Alexey Dospekhov