Liverpool hope to sign record-breaking midfielder Chris Rigg. The teenager is in huge demand across Europe right now.
The Sunderland Echo reports that Liverpool are among the clubs hoping to sign Chris Rigg this summer. Rigg is still only 16 but has now featured in 11 professional games for Sunderland.
Not only that, but the teenager has broken multiple records. He’s Sunderland’s all-time youngest goalscorer, as well as the youngest goalscorer in the history of the EFL Cup.
The fact he’s a midfielder and not a striker only makes that all the more remarkable.
But that kind of ability at 16 naturally draws interest from elsewhere. Liverpool are there hoping to sign Rigg, alongside the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Bayern Munich.
It’s not exactly clear what Rigg wants to do, though. His scholarship with Sunderland ends this summer and he’s free to join whoever he likes, with any new club merely needing to pay a tribunal fee to get him.
There’s a suggestion, however, that Rigg may view regular football at Sunderland as more valuable than youth football at an elite club. It means that despite all the interest, the 16-year-old may opt to remain where he is.
It’s an absolutely massive decision for him, then. Rigg can’t exactly make or break his career with the choice, and there will be just as much interest in him next year, but he does have an opportunity here that few teenagers get.
Liverpool have signed plenty of players like this down the years. The most notable right now is Harvey Elliott, who played senior football at Fulham while he was 16 and then moved to Anfield via tribunal.
This would be a very similar deal, then. The fact that Elliott has since made it into Liverpool’s first-team is a bonus in that regard – it’s very easy for Rigg to see the pathway.
However, Jurgen Klopp is leaving in the summer and it’s not yet clear if that pathway exists under an unknown new manager.
