Ibrahima Konate

[Sugar Ape]

From Ornstein in The Athletic:

 

Liverpool finalising deal to sign Ibrahima Konate from RB Leipzig

 

After a disappointing Premier League title defence, Liverpool have moved to bolster their squad ahead of next season by lining up what could prove to be the English top flight’s first major summer signing.

 

The Athletic can exclusively reveal the club are in the process of finalising a deal to bring the RB Leipzig and France youth international centre-back Ibrahima Konate to Merseyside.

 

The situation is already said to be at an advanced stage and, if everything goes to plan, it would enable Konate to be added to Liverpool’s ranks at the soonest opportunity, which may prove all the more valuable for them in a summer featuring the delayed European Championship.

 

Although there is still work to be done and there are other suitors, sources in Germany indicate that Liverpool have made significant progress on a player seen as key to their recruitment plans.

 

With Leipzig under no pressure to sell, it is anticipated that any buyer will have to pay the 21-year-old’s release clause — thought to be around €40 million — rather than negotiating a lower price.

 

The Bundesliga side are believed to be aware of interest in Konate but, if Liverpool choose to activate the mechanism in his contract, then talks would not be needed between the two parties.

 

Konate joined Leipzig from Sochaux in June 2017 on a five-year contract. Despite injuries limiting him to fewer than 100 appearances for Leipzig, he is among the most promising talents in his position and has attracted interest from a number of high-profile suitors.

 

Currently with France at the European Under-21 European Championship in Hungary and Slovenia, the 6ft 4in defender was an unused substitute in his country’s 1-0 defeat by Denmark in their opening fixture on Thursday while he played 90 minutes in a 2-0 win over Russia last night.

 

Liverpool’s campaign has been ravaged by injuries — most notably to Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip at the heart of their back line — and that appears to have intensified their pursuit.

 

Reinforcements came during the January transfer window in the form of Ben Davies permanently from Preston and Schalke’s Ozan Kabak on loan with an option to buy. Davies has yet to feature and a decision must be reached on whether Kabak will be purchased for £18 million plus add-ons.

 

Even before their raft of problems, Liverpool had been expected to enter the market for a central defender at the end of 2020-21 and were heavily linked with Leipzig’s Dayot Upamecano. But with Upamecano heading to Bayern Munich, his colleague Konate emerged as their primary target as the six-time European champions seek to strengthen in a vital area.

 

Given his Bundesliga and Champions League experience, Konate would be expected to challenge Liverpool’s existing options for a starting place immediately but there is also huge appeal in the long-term potential he offers.

 

There are no specified return dates for Van Dijk, Gomez or Matip, and the trio are all under contract until June 2023 or 2024. Two makeshift alternatives — Fabinho and Jordan Henderson — have suffered from injury problems of their own and are also tied down through to 2023.

 

Following the sale of Dejan Loven last July without a replacement being sourced, Klopp has also utilised homegrown pair Nathaniel Phillips and Rhys Williams in recent months.

 

Leipzig have prepared for Upamecano’s exit by acquiring Mohamed Simakan of Strasbourg, while securing Josko Gvardiol from Dinamo Zagreb last September provides further cover if Konate departs as well.

 

The German side are becoming renowned for doing their business early, with Dominik Szoboszlai landed in advance of the January window and Brian Brobbey on course to arrive as a free agent.

[Bobby Hundreds]

Is this the lad who has had more injuries than Ruth Langsfords had regrets.

[Sugar Ape]

2 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Is this the lad who has had more injuries than Ruth Langsfords had regrets.

He’s the new Gomez who himself is the new Matip. 
 

 

[YorkshireRed]

16 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

He’s the new Gomez who himself is the new Matip. 
 

 

I like how he was out for zero days with a knock but five for a minor knock. He’ll fit in well. 

[Scott_M]

I’ve been saying about this lad for ages. I’m obviously the new forum ITK.

 

Where was @Paulie Dangerously in this? Nowhere, that’s where!

[VladimirIlyich]

Gonna need a bigger Physion room.

[Scott_M]

I’m on my phone so can’t copy and paste with all the graphs and examples in it, but this is really interesting...

 

 

A summary would be -

 

He’s 6’4.

He’s one of the quickest defenders in Europe.

He’s an aggressive front foot defender.

He’s loves an ariel duel and 1-on-1 competition.

He likes to bring the ball out of defence like Matip.

His passing range isn’t as good or accurate as our other defenders.

 

He sounds perfect for us, just need to keep him fit and I obviously share those concerns. 

[VladimirIlyich]

Konate wasn't the one who was really bad in our first leg v Leipzig was he?

[Sugar Ape]

What Ibrahima Konate could bring to Liverpool

 

 

In Ibrahima Konate — or Ibu, as he’s known to friends and team-mates — Liverpool are looking to sign an extremely raw but promising young centre-back who, on paper, has all of the tools to become one of the best in Europe.

 

Konate stands 6ft 4in tall and has a very solid frame. He’s quick, too, with one data scout at a top European club noting how he’s been clocked as one of the three fastest centre-backs in the continent’s top five leagues within the past two seasons. That speed makes him a perfect fit for Liverpool’s high line.

 

At just 21, Konate already has plenty of games under his belt in the Champions League and Bundesliga for RB Leipzig. In the Champions League and among players aged 21 and under, only Juventus’s Matthijs de Ligt, Borussia Dortmund’s Dan-Axel Zagadou and Perr Schuurs of Ajax have played more minutes than Konate’s 588 since 2018-19.

 

A natural right-footer, Konate has featured primarily either on the right of a back three or four, or in the middle of a back three for Leipzig.

 

 

Liverpool’s pursuit of him is interesting because, in recent seasons, he’s not actually played a lot of football.

 

The 2018-19 season was when he was at his healthiest, mainly featuring in a back four alongside Willi Orban or Dayot Upamecano. He featured in all but six games of the 34-game league season for the best defence in the Bundesliga, which conceded just 29 goals in total.

 

Konate’s 2019-20 was largely derailed by a torn muscle fibre in his right leg sustained in an October Champions League game at home to Lyon. That injury kept him on the sidelines until a post-lockdown comeback in mid-June. Konate then featured sparingly this season before a pre-Christmas ankle injury kept him out of action for another two months.

 

 

Reading between the lines, Liverpool saw enough from Konate in 2018-19, when he was just 19, to justify that he’s a player worth going for, even taking into account his poor record with injuries of late. There also must be some belief that these problems aren’t going to impact him in the longer-term.

 

His pizza chart below — created using data taken from smarterscout, a site that gives players a rating from 0-99 relating to either how often they do a given stylistic action or how effective they are compared with others playing in their position — is from that 2018-19 season. It gives us the largest sample of Konate’s games to help draw some conclusions about his style and quality.

 

 

Konate’s chart is dominated by a couple of key elements.

 

For a start, his tendency to carry the ball upfield or attempt to dribble past players is extremely high for a centre-back. He didn’t get many touches, with his 50 touches per 90 minutes, according to Statsbomb data on fbref, putting him firmly in the bottom five per cent of Bundesliga defenders. When the France Under-21 international did get on the ball, though, he looked to carry it out from the back and even take players on in the process.

 

Defensively, Konate regularly looked to disrupt opposition moves through tackling, fouling, blocking and clearing, as his 62 out of 99 rating in that metric suggests. The defending intensity metric here points to how often smarterscout’s model thinks that Konate was the most relevant defender for each opposition touch, based on his own touches. What this says is that Konate is prone to going toe-to-toe with attackers, pushing up to them and applying pressure, which is to be expected given he played for a Leipzig side who favoured a high-pressing approach.

 

When Konate is the most relevant defender, he has an extremely high impact on the opponent’s ability to either progress the ball further upfield or create chances (86/99). Whether it’s through him actively interrupting moves or through his positioning preventing the ball from going further upfield, it shows us his ability as a young defender, which is only going to improve with time.

 

While not from the same season, there was an example of Konate’s defensive acumen in his side’s 3-2 Champions League win over Manchester United last December.

 

After a sloppy pass out from right centre-back Nordi Mukiele cedes possession cheaply to Bruno Fernandes, Leipzig are badly exposed at the back. Konate is a bit behind Marcus Rashford and there’s a huge amount of space available in the box for United to attack into.

 

 

Konate uses his speed to catch Rashford and applies pressure on him. He tries to stick a foot in, doesn’t make contact with the ball and Rashford shrugs him off.

 

 

Konate stays on Rashford’s shoulder, though, preventing a shot at goal which, for a right-footer like Rashford aiming for a wide-open far post, would have a high likelihood of curling in. His intervention buys left centre-back Orban a bit of time to get across to block Rashford’s shot and turns what could have been a very dangerous situation into a relatively unthreatening one.

 

 

If Rashford’s decision-making had been a little better, Orban opting to leave Mason Greenwood free may have been punished but ultimately, Konate deserves credit here for both slowing Rashford down and forcing him into a poor decision.

 

In terms of his passing, Konate’s ability to retain possession leaves a lot to be desired. His rating of 25/99 points to a defender fairly careless in possession — something he would have to improve upon at Liverpool.

 

Below are Konate’s ratings for how often he attempts passes over different distances. A high rating here indicates that a pass in that range is made a lot of the time relative to the number of touches on the ball the player has. A low rating here indicates the opposite — they rarely make a pass of that type given their touches.

 

 

Compared to Liverpool’s other main centre-backs in the seasons in which they’ve played their most minutes, there’s a clear disparity between Konate’s game and those of Joe Gomez, Joel Matip and Virgil van Dijk. Konate preferred to keep it short, rarely looking to hit those more medium or longer-length passes, yet still retained the ball poorly for his side.

 

Gomez, Matip and Van Dijk on the other hand had the tendency to pass over longer distances, while all having a relatively high ball retention rating too. Van Dijk’s excellent passing range is noticeable here, with him being able to both pass far and with accuracy.

 

Konate’s poor ball retention may be linked to his ball-carrying, though. Here’s an example against Hoffenheim this past December, where he has clear passing options to his left and right and one slightly tougher pass in to Dani Olmo in midfield.

 

 

Instead of trying the riskier pass to Olmo, Konate decides to step up with the ball, enticing a Hoffenheim opponent to put heavy pressure on him. There’s a lack of movement here from his team-mates but Konate attempts to play the ball into Yussuf Poulsen on the halfway line…

 

 

…under heavy pressure, his pass goes loose.

 

 

There was a similar situation in the Champions League a week earlier, too. Under minimal pressure against United, Konate steps up into midfield, passing Rashford and Fernandes unopposed. An alert Scott McTominay picks off the attempted pass to Christopher Nkunku with ease…

 

 

…setting up a counter-attack with Rashford at the front of it and Fernandes and Greenwood on either side of McTominay.

 

 

The attack ultimately leads to nothing but shows both the benefit and the cost of Konate’s ball-carrying and passing abilities.

 

These examples show Konate’s comfort on the ball but his poor execution when he’s properly got going or when under pressure. No doubt, with time, those aspects will improve, and that tendency to even look to carry the ball out as much as Konate does is quite rare among youngsters playing in Europe. Looking at smarterscout’s data since 2018-19, only 14 centre-backs aged 21 or younger have a rating of 85/99 or higher for carrying and dribbling, including the likes of Sevilla’s Jules Kounde, Alessandro Bastoni at Inter Milan and Leicester’s Wesley Fofana.

 

Konate does excel in his individual battles, though, both in the air in open play, and when attempting to beat opposition players one-on-one.

 

Smarterscout’s models here take into account the quality of players involved in each duel, meaning that they are given more credit for beating those who are tough to beat in the air or on the ground, and are punished for losing out to those who are weaker.

 

 

From aerial duels at set pieces and when defending one-on-one, he’s better than Gomez but still well below average for a defender.

 

Aerial duels in open play and beating players one-on-one are where Konate excels, though. He’s already a good size to challenge anyone in the air but pairing that with a good leap makes him nearly unbeatable.

 

His rating of 92 out of 99 is similar to the likes of Van Dijk and Matip, and among players aged 21 and younger in Europe, only Nice’s Stanley Nsoki and current Liverpool man Ozan Kabak are deemed to be better duellers by smarterscout. That’s reinforced by Statsbomb data on fbref, as no player in the past year to date has won a higher proportion of their aerial duels than Konate’s 84.1 per cent.

 

Konate is also an excellent dribbler one-on-one — better than any of Liverpool’s current crop of centre-backs — and is the joint-best in Europe’s top five leagues alongside Manuel Akanji at Dortmund and Kiko at Real Valladolid by this rating.

 

That dribbling ability was on show in last season’s Champions League semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain.

 

With the ball at his feet at the back and no clear progressive passing options available, Konate starts his adventure upfield. With plenty of space to move into, he beats Angel Di Maria with ease.

 

 

Leandro Paredes steps up to him next but Konate turns down an open passing option in favour of trucking into the space behind the Argentinian. Konate shuffles left and right before easing Paredes off him, carrying the ball into the space between the lines of PSG’s defence and midfield, ignoring the open Mukiele.

 

 

Now, PSG have players scrambling back to their own goal and most of their defenders have changed their body position from facing forwards to sideways on — exactly the sort of position you want them to be in.

 

 

A poor cross from Konate rounds off his travels — again, poor ball retention — but shows the raw materials that Jurgen Klopp and his staff will be hoping to work with come the summer.

 

Konate, with his side up against a set defence and under heavy pressure himself, was able to completely change the game within a couple of seconds. If this is the potential he has at 21, imagine what a more polished player will be capable of.

 

*

 

There’s an element of risk with all transfers — no one gets all of them right — but Konate could represent a riskier move from sporting director Michael Edwards and the other powers-that-be at Liverpool’s owners FSG than we’re perhaps used to.

 

Last summer, signing Thiago was something of a departure from the norm because of his age but Konate is different because Liverpool are usually so reluctant to cough up money for players who have suffered numerous injuries. They ultimately pulled the plug on buying Nabil Fekir from Lyon in 2018 owing to concerns over a previous ACL problem while despite Matip’s injury record, he was a free agent and has contributed plenty in recent seasons.

 

Konate is just 21, though, and if Liverpool activate the option they have to purchase the on-loan Kabak from Schalke this summer, worth £18 million plus add-ons, they will have stocked up on young (Kabak turned 21 last Thursday) but inexperienced talent at the back for future seasons.

 

Nathaniel Phillips has played the most minutes of all proper centre-backs in the league this season for a team who have played 18 different central defensive combinations. For context, that’s the second-most in Europe this season behind Hellas Verona’s 19 combinations, whereas last season, they had just five different pairings.

 

 

Per smarterscout’s data, the most similar player to Konate in 2018-19 is Kabak himself in both 2018-19 at Stuttgart and then last season with Schalke. Despite the former being far more mobile than the latter, both are capable of stepping up into midfield with the ball at their feet and are aggressive defenders, too.

 

The question now for Liverpool is what they do with Kabak. If Konate is a player in the same mould but more suited to playing in a high line, would the signing of both men represent a change in approach to how Liverpool play at the back, or will Liverpool hope for Kabak to have a good showing at the upcoming European Championship finals with Turkey and look to cash in on him after activating their option to sign him permanently?

 

That can be answered another day but Liverpool’s potential signing of Konate signals a significant investment in their back line for seasons to come.

 

If he can replicate, or even improve on, his form from 2018-19, activating his €40 million release clause is going to look like another stroke of genius in the transfer market from a club who consistently plays chess while others play chequers.

[Scott_M]

3 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Konate wasn't the one who was really bad in our first leg v Leipzig was he?

No, that was Upamencano. Konaté was on the bench in both games. 

[Sugar Ape]

3 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Konate wasn't the one who was really bad in our first leg v Leipzig was he?

No he was on the bench I think. That was Upamecano.

[Scott_M]

The last couple of paragraphs on his comparisons to Kabak are really interesting. 
 

I wonder if we’ll sign both? Both at 21, there is a potential partnership there for 10+ years. 

[Jairzinho]

Could be a useful understudy to Phillips.

[joe_fishfish]

54 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

He’s the new Gomez who himself is the new Matip. 
 

 

He just gets us.

[joe_fishfish]

Seriously though - I don't see the point of signing any player with that kind of injury record. Between Gomez, Matip, Ox and Keita we already have enough players to keep the medical team busy.

[TheDrowningMan]

Clearly a very promising player, but the money seems nuts given his injury record and general lack of first team football. £10m and you’d understand the gamble, but unless we’re spending to a City-esque extent this coming summer £40m sounds like a lot.

[Jairzinho]

Rather than having 14 injury prone centre backs we could have four that aren't always falling apart.

[Rotpeter]

9 minutes ago, TheDrowningMan said:

Clearly a very promising player, but the money seems nuts given his injury record and general lack of first team football. £10m and you’d understand the gamble, but unless we’re spending to a City-esque extent this coming summer £40m sounds like a lot.

I wish it was all true
I wish it couldn't be a story

[sir roger]

28 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

No, that was Upamencano. Konaté was on the bench in both games. 

So , they had a defence like the Keystone Kops that he couldn't improve , sounds good.

[Daisy]

Edwards having a mare here. Jesus

[Colonel Bumcunt]

13 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:

Rather than having 14 injury prone centre backs we could have four that aren't always falling apart.

Maybe we're embracing chaos theory. 

Randomness being relied upon to see us through patches of games with at least 2 decent CBs ready for any single game. 

I'm not saying it's a bad strategy, we have no more guarantee of Konate being fit for a season that we do of we sign anyone else. 

Fundamentally, the number of players we have to choose from will decrease the risk of what we saw this season, even if they are mostly all injury prone.  Allied to that, if to hey don't cost £80m each,.then we have more money to spend elsewhere and we potentially have assets that will rise in value.  

 

Van Dijk, Gomez, Phillips, Kabak, Konate, Matip.  

For a combined £140m. 

I can dig it. 

 

[Paulie Dangerously]

1 hour ago, Scott_M said:

I’ve been saying about this lad for ages. I’m obviously the new forum ITK.

 

Where was @Paulie Dangerously in this? Nowhere, that’s where!

I was revealing details on my invite only twitter mate. Assume you saw a screenshot and wanted to play the big man. Enjoy it mate. 

[Jairzinho]

3 minutes ago, Colonel Bumcunt said:

Maybe we're embracing chaos theory. 

Randomness being relied upon to see us through patches of games with at least 2 decent CBs ready for any single game. 

I'm not saying it's a bad strategy, we have no more guarantee of Konate being fit for a season that we do of we sign anyone else. 

Fundamentally, the number of players we have to choose from will decrease the risk of what we saw this season, even if they are mostly all injury prone.  Allied to that, if to hey don't cost £80m each,.then we have more money to spend elsewhere and we potentially have assets that will rise in value.  

 

Van Dijk, Gomez, Phillips, Kabak, Konate, Matip.  

For a combined £140m. 

I can dig it. 

 

Wages.

 

Matip needs binning, and the last thing we should be doing is signing another injury prone centre back.

[joe_fishfish]

Maybe we're signing him on a pay as you play deal. I fucking doubt it though.

[Stickman]

Why not just give Matip a new contract