{"id":472925,"date":"2026-05-29T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/472925\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T11:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:09:07","slug":"ibrahima-konate-set-to-leave-liverpool-on-a-free-transfer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/472925\/","title":{"rendered":"Ibrahima Konate set to leave Liverpool on a free transfer"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC Sport understands that negotiations have stopped and Konate will become the latest player to leave the club on a free this summer after Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah.<\/p>\n

Last year, defender Trent Alexander-Arnold<\/a> joined Real Madrid a month before his contract expired after the Spanish club paid a fee to release him early to play in the Club World Cup.<\/p>\n

Captain Virgil van Dijk’s current deal expires next summer, while the club failed to sign Marc Guehi on deadline day<\/a> last September, with the England player joining Manchester City<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n

Liverpool<\/a> are confident they have sufficient depth at centre-half after recruiting Giovanni Leoni last summer and the arrival of \u00a360m Jeremy Jacquet, 20, this summer.<\/p>\n

But it does leave Van Dijk, 34, as their only experienced central defender.<\/p>\n

Frenchman Jacquet, who turns 21 in July, played 21 games for Rennes last season but missed the last four months with a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n

Leoni, 19, was ruled out for a year after after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in September, a month after joining the Reds from Parma for a fee of \u00a326m plus add-ons.<\/p>\n

The belief within Liverpool<\/a> is that other areas – like replacing Mohamed Salah and filling the gap after Hugo Ekitike’s injury – are priorities, rather than agreeing to an expensive renewal for Konate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Sport understands that negotiations have stopped and Konate will become the latest player to leave the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-472925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}