If you knew only half the story, Leicester City versus Liverpool on Sunday afternoon would make for a pretty tasty Premier League affair.
Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Foxes battling against the rising tide of relegation against a Liverpool team pursuing only a second-ever Premier League title.
In reality, however, any pre-match drama Sky Sports attempt to conjure up may feel – certainly to neutral observers – somewhat forced. There is a grim inevitability about Leicester’s relegation. And Liverpool, already thirteen points clear of second-placed Arsenal, can actually be crowned this weekend provided The Gunners lose at Ipswich earlier in the day.
As for Patson Daka, if the reports are to be believed regarding his turning down of a move to Anfield back in 2021, well let’s just say any regrets the striker may be feeling will probably be multiplied.
Leicester City flop Patson Daka could have joined Liverpool
According to claims from his homeland of Zambia, Daka opted for Leicester City over Liverpool because he felt – understandably so – that first-team opportunities would be more forthcoming at the King Power Stadium.
Fabrizio Romano, however, has a different take. He claimed to have been informed that, the reason why Liverpool missed out on the Red Bull Salzburg hitman is that the Merseyside giants failed to find a buyer for both Xherdan Shaqiri or Divock Origi.
“Liverpool had a strategy,” Romano explained. “Sell players and then eventually sign new players. If they had sold Shaqiri or Divock Origi in the first days of June, then they had the chance to sign Patson Daka.
“They were interested but never made an official bid. Then, it collapsed.”
It is easy to forget, four years on, just how highly Daka was regarded before his £23 million switch to the Midlands.
One of his former coaches labelled Daka the ‘next Thierry Henry’. Fellow Zambia international Larry Bwalya felt there were similarities with Kylian Mbappe. Daka even netted an eight minute hat-trick against Sturm Graz at the time.
And, with such claims feel pretty outlandish now, Daka did score 27 and 34 goals in his last two seasons at Salzburg. The very same Salzburg side who set Sadio Mane, Dominik Szoboszlai and a certain Erling Haaland – amongst others – on the path to greatness.
34 goals in his final year in Austria, meanwhile, is eleven more than Daka has scored during nearly four full seasons in Leicester blue. 116 appearances, 23 goals. Over the course of the current Premier League campaign, that record stands at one in 20.
Former Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers saw Daka as an eventual successor for Jamie Vardy back in 2021. Nearly half a decade later, it is a pretty damning indictment that Daka remains in a 38-year-old Vardy’s shadow.
Ruud van Nistelrooy is still confident in Daka’s ‘potential’
Furthermore, considering that he has started only five league matches since the 2-1 Boxing Day defeat at Anfield, chances are that – if Liverpool are crowned champions at the King Power Stadium on Sunday – Daka will be watching the celebrations unfold from the substitute’s bench.
“I think he’s got great potential. That’s what he showed in Austria, scoring a lot of goals, assisting a lot,” Van Nistelrooy, an iconic centre-forward in his playing days, said shortly after taking the Leicester job.
“He’s got a lot of potential.”
In the year when he turns 27, however, that Patson Daka is still being discussed as a centre-forward yet to scratch the surface of his ‘potential’ rather sums up a career which has not only stalled but barely looks road legal anymore.
To think, if Liverpool had managed to shift Origi or Shaqiri, Daka could have found himself learning from Jurgen Klopp. The coach who turned Robert Lewandowski, Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino and Red Bull graduate Sadio Mane into some of the finest forwards of their generation.
What might have been, eh?