Liverpool Target Bradley Barcola as Salah Succession Begins

Liverpool’s search for a new right‑side talisman has zeroed in on Paris. With Mohamed Salah gone after nine glittering years, the name now written in bold at the top of the Anfield shortlist is Bradley Barcola.

The 23‑year‑old French forward has emerged as Liverpool’s preferred option to inherit Salah’s berth in Andoni Iraola’s first great rebuild. The club have moved beyond the scouting and sounding‑out phase. According to Sky Sports, Liverpool have prepared an opening offer after holding preliminary talks with Barcola’s representatives and are readying a formal approach to Paris Saint‑Germain.

This is not a market Liverpool expected to enter lightly. They have already felt the going rate for elite attacking talent this summer.

Missed targets and a shifting market

Yan Diomande was the first big swing. Liverpool pushed hard for the teenage Ivory Coast winger, tabling a bid in the region of £85 million to RB Leipzig. It was turned away. Leipzig now look set to cash in at a far higher price, with Real Madrid poised to pay more than £100m for Diomande after his World Cup exploits, despite heavy pressure from PSG.

Liverpool have also been active in Ligue 1, making an initial move for Monaco’s Maghnes Akliouche, another player PSG have repeatedly bid for. On top of that, they triggered the £34.5m release clause of Spain winger Victor Munoz at Osasuna — their only completed signing so far as the Iraola era begins on Merseyside.

Those deals sketch a clear picture: Liverpool are trawling the top shelf of European wide forwards, and they are prepared to pay. The problem? Everyone else is too.

PSG dig in over Barcola

Over the weekend, reports in France and England painted the scale of the challenge. PSG are said to be demanding around £145m for Barcola, a price framed against the recent Premier League midfield boom: Chelsea’s £117m move for Morgan Rogers and Manchester City’s £116m deal for Elliot Anderson have not gone unnoticed at the Parc des Princes.

PSG see Barcola as part of their present and future. He scored 13 goals and supplied seven assists in 49 appearances across all competitions last season for a side that swept the domestic honours and went deep in Europe. He then carried that form onto the international stage, scoring three times in eight games as France stumbled to a disappointing fourth‑place finish at the World Cup in North America.

Numbers like that, at his age, in that team, explain why PSG are in no mood to sell on the cheap.

A restless talent

Barcola’s stance, though, is starting to pull in the opposite direction.

He is understood to be keen on leaving PSG in this window and has no appetite to extend a contract that runs until 2028. The frustration is easy to trace: back‑to‑back Champions League finals under Luis Enrique, and in both he began on the bench. For a player of his ambition, that kind of stage is not somewhere you want to be watching from the touchline.

The sense is of a forward who wants to be central, not rotational. At Anfield, the pitch is wide open. Salah’s departure by mutual agreement earlier in the summer has left a rare vacancy: guaranteed minutes on the right of one of Europe’s most demanding forward lines, in front of a fanbase that anoints heroes quickly and remembers them for decades.

Valuations worlds apart

For now, the numbers do not align. Liverpool and PSG remain far apart in how they value Barcola. Liverpool know they cannot allow this pursuit to drag them into a bidding war that distorts their entire window. PSG, armed with a long contract and no financial pressure to sell, can point to recent mega‑fees and ask why they should compromise.

Yet the pattern of the summer is hard to ignore. Liverpool have already seen Diomande slip towards Madrid and watched PSG circle Akliouche, a player they themselves have tested the water for. With Munoz through the door, the next attacking signing has to land. It has to look and feel like a statement.

Barcola fits that brief. Direct, productive, entering his prime, with Champions League and World Cup experience already banked. A player who wants more responsibility, at the exact moment Liverpool need a new right‑side reference point.

The first offer will not end this story. It will start the real negotiation. And with the window ticking and Salah’s shadow still stretching across Anfield, the question now is simple: how far are Liverpool prepared to go to make Bradley Barcola the face of their post‑Salah frontline?