Rumour Mongering: Liverpool’s Diaz for Barca’s De Jong Swap Possible

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Player swaps almost never happen, but that won’t stop the rumour mongers concocting a Luis Diaz for Frenkie de Jong deal between Liverpool and Barcelona.

In the past, it has been suggested that Luis Diaz was high up on the summer wish list at Barcelona when Liverpool moved quickly to steal him away from Tottenham in January of 2022, with the Catalans presumably not prepared to get involved in the winter window.

In the past, it has been suggested that one of Liverpool’s most-wanted midfielders was Frenkie de Jong, who moved to Barcelona in 2019 and ever since has been linked with the Reds whenever they seem to have a midfield need—or Barcelona needs to find another lever to pull.

It was perhaps only a matter of time, then, before somebody put two and two together and got player swap. This week, that finally happened, with Argentine journalist (and/or transfer bullshit shoveler) Christian Martín telling DSports it’s something that could totally happen.

“At Liverpool they are expecting an offer at some point and we know Luis Diaz is a Barcelona fan,” said Martín. “At Liverpool, they tell me, ‘At some point, we are waiting for an offer.’ They hope Barcelona will offer them a player. Frenkie de Jong would be the one. De Jong would go to Liverpool and Luis go to Barcelona.”

Far be it for us to throw cold water on a big name player swap proposal, but we’re dubious Liverpool are telling Martín much of anything about Diaz or De Jong or anything, really, and this all seems rather a fantastical rumour built out of old rumours.

Nearly two years ago, Barcelona were rumoured to like Diaz—but not enough to be a serious contender for him when Tottenham and then Liverpool moved for him. Three years before that, Liverpool were rumoured to like De Jong—but they missed, he’ll be 27 before the end of the season, and they’ve since completed a midfield rebuild.

If this proposal had been floated before last Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai, and Ryan Gravenberch—all younger than De Jong—arrived last summer you might have been able to talk yourself around to almost believing it was theoretically plausible. Now, not so much.