Liverpool have become renowned in recent years for seemingly always managing to get the players they truly want in the transfer market, without fault.
Jurgen Klopp has made it an ideal habit of only signing players who are first-choice in their minds to succeed at Anfield. If a player isn’t available, they often don’t sign someone else just for the sake of spending money.
It wasn’t always like that.
Years gone by, there have been times when Liverpool haven’t always been successful when recruiting new players. Whether this be the ones brought in not succeeding, or not acquiring those who are high on the priority list.
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Rather famously, back in the summer of 2006, Liverpool came close to signing Brazil legend Dani Alves from Sevilla, with the now 39-year-old going to establish himself as one of football’s deadliest attacking full-backs in the years that followed.
He is now set to be a free agent after being released by Barcelona. It was his second stint at the Nou Camp, after he re-signed for the La Liga giants as a free agent last season following his release from Sao Paulo.
Had things gone differently, Alves could have been a Liverpool player under Rafa Benitez’s revolution at Anfield more than a decade ago.
“I pretty much had an agreement with Liverpool,” the Brazilian told FourFourTwo in 2017. “But for whatever reason it didn’t happen at the last moment and I really don’t know why, as I wasn’t the one conducting the negotiations. I had other people representing me back then.”
Two years later Alves would go on to sign for Barcelona for the first time. During his first spell at the Nou Camp he would win six La Liga titles and three European Cups, which set him on his way to becoming football's most decorated player, with his Olympic Gold medal with Brazil this summer the 43rd major honour of his career.
Former Liverpool CEO Rick Parry admits the Reds made the wrong decision pulling the plug on the deal.
“We had the deal - finally, after enormous complications - tied up for Dani Alves and then the decision was should we buy two players or should we spend all of that on a full-back?” he told BBC Radio Merseyside in 2017.
“Alves was not the player then that he is now, but he always looked like he would be a great player.
“Would he have been a better signing than [Jermaine] Pennant and [Peter] Crouch, for example? Probably yes, but it's easy with hindsight.
“Looking back, if I could do anything different, it would be to focus on buying one [player] at a time rather than having to buy five or six every season.”
While that is Parry’s account of the events, Benitez remembers things a little differently. Crouch actually joined Liverpool a year before they made their move for Alves, with the former Reds boss revealing he was left with a difficult choice between signing the Brazilian or bringing in Dirk Kuyt.
“We found ourselves in a difficult position that summer: we wanted more width on the right, and we also wanted to sign a striker,” the Spaniard recalled in his autobiography, published in 2012.
“One option whom I had been alerted to was Daniel Alves, the Brazilian right-back, who was available from Sevilla. We had been tracking him since his early days in South America and we knew he was a very good player.
“We only had funds though, for one purchase. We needed a striker and, with money limited, it was better to fill that slot than sign a full-back to play as a winger. We signed Kuyt.”
