Approach made: Saudi club keen to lure ‘best-in-class’ Liverpool giant who’s prepared to engage

Liverpool fans are no strangers to seeing Saudi Arabian approaches for prized assets at Anfield, with several former Reds having been enticed to the Middle East.

Jordan Henderson, Fabinho and Bobby Firmino all left Merseyside for the Gulf state in 2023, while their former teammates Sadio Mane and Gini Wijnaldum are also playing over there, and Steven Gerrard previously had a spell in charge of Al-Ettifaq.

More recently, several current Reds (including Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz) have been linked with Saudi Pro League clubs, and Al-Ittihad even put in an audacious £150m bid for Mo Salah two summers ago which was mercifully rejected.

One giant of Saudi Arabian football could be about to flex their muscles again, though, in attempting to lure a crucial Liverpool figure.

Saudi club make approach for Michael Edwards

According to Ben Jacobs for GIVEMESPORT, FSG’s CEO of Football Michael Edwards (formerly the Reds’ sporting director) has been approached by Al-Hilal to discuss a senior role at the Riyadh club.

While the 45-year-old is happy in his current job and isn’t actively looking to leave the Boston-based firm, he has shown an interest in engaging with the Saudi outfit’s president Fahad bin Nafel and can see the appeal of speaking to clubs who are wishing to overhaul their sporting department and/or give him the scope to build his own executive team.

In sharing a link to his report via X, the journalist added that Al-Hilal want the FSG supremo to oversee a behind-the-scenes rebuild, viewing him as ‘best-in-class’ in that respect.

Hopefully Edwards will resist Saudi overtures

Anyone who’s aware of Edwards’ body of work over the past decade won’t be the least bit surprised to hear of the Saui Arabian club trying to entice him to the Middle East.

While football fans typically don’t adore executive figures in the same way that they would with players and managers, Liverpool supporters would readily acknowledge the 45-year-old as one of the most important men behind the Reds’ renaissance of recent years.

As sporting director, he oversaw a number of game-changing transfers such as the signings of Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker, along with smart acquisitions like Andy Robertson, Fabinho, Diogo Jota and Ibrahima Konate.

Edwards has also been incredibly proficient at brokering sizeable fees from selling squad players at Anfield, as evidenced by the sales of Rhian Brewster (£23.5m) and Harry Wilson (£12m), among others.

While he’s not as hands-on at Liverpool now compared to previous years, his involvement in the FSG chain of command since taking up the CEO of Football role last summer means that he’s still a crucial figure in the Merseyside ecosystem.

Let’s hope that he doesn’t have the same wanderlust for Saudi Arabia as the likes of Henderson, Fabinho, Gerrard et al.

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