A one-time Premier League title winner with Liverpool is reportedly being eyed for a sensational return to the English top flight.
Four years after suffering relegation with Newcastle, Gini Wijnaldum was lifting the Premier League trophy as part of Jurgen Klopp’s Reds team in 2019/20, which accumulated 99 points in that campaign and became champions with seven matches to spare.
The Netherlands international left for Paris Saint-Germain a year later and has been playing with Al-Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia since 2023, but it’s now been reported that the 35-year-old could be set for one last hurrah in England.
According to Football Insider, Coventry are exploring a deal to sign the former Liverpool midfielder, who’d seemingly be interested in coming back to the Premier League, to which the Sky Blues have been promoted for next season.
Wijnaldum’s contract with Al-Ettifaq expires this summer, and sources for the outlet have claimed that the Dutchman is ‘still very fit’ for a player of his age.
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At a time when Liverpool are set to go into the final day of the Premier League season with Champions League qualification not yet assured, the midfielder’s breakthrough goal against Middlesbrough nine years ago on a day when the Reds had to win feels even more like a seminal moment in our modern history.
Had we not won that afternoon, there’d have been no fun-filled journey towards the final in Kyiv a year later, and quite possibly none of the success which followed under Klopp, in which the Dutchman played a massive part by scoring 22 times in 237 appearances.
Sadio Mane spoke of how Wijnaldum was universally loved within the Anfield dressing room during his time on Merseyside, and some of his individual performances on the pitch were simply masterful.
If Coventry succeed in bringing him back to the Premier League, it’d be a remarkable coup for them and carry echoes of how Sunderland responded to promotion by bringing in an experienced top-flight midfield general in Granit Xhaka, who’s been one of their best players this season.
In the same season that Wijnaldum became a domestic champion with Liverpool, the Sky Blues were in League One.
Six years later, that Frank Lampard’s side are being linked with a move for the Dutchman shows just how remarkable their progress has been, and we don’t doubt that the former Reds icon could still excel in the English top flight.
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