Manchester City-bound Jeremy Doku has revealed how a conversation with Sadio Mane led to a potential transfer to Liverpool falling through.
90min understands that City have agreed a fee of €65m (£55m) including add-ons with Doku's current club Rennes for the talented winger's services, and personal terms on a five-year deal have also been agreed.
Official confirmation of the move is now seemingly imminent, pending a successful medical, and ahead of the transfer some quotes have come to light regarding how close Doku has previously come to joining a Premier League club.
At just 15 years of age, prior to signing his first professional contract at Anderlecht, the Belgian attracted a huge amount of interest from Liverpool, who sent a Jurgen Klopp and a number of first-team players to try and convince Doku of making the move to Anfield.
READ MORE FROM 90MIN'S TALKING TRANSFERS TEAM
One first-teamer who was sent to talk to Doku was Sadio Mane, though the soon-to-be City star told
Ouest-France back in 2021 that the actual conversation they had didn't necessarily go the way it supposed to.
"I talked a lot with Mane, but we didn't really talk about football. We talked about everything," Doku said. "He told me that I was young, that I still had time… he wasn't trying to convince me or to say to me 'come here, you will succeed'. So I preferred to be careful. I knew what my trajectory had to be. I knew what route I needed to take, and I knew at that moment I needed to stay at Anderlecht."
Doku instead opted to stay at Anderlecht before making the move to Rennes in 2020, where he has thoroughly impressed to become a regular fixture in Belgium's senior squad.
City will perhaps expect his goal return to improve though, with Doku registering just ten goals in his 74 appearances in Ligue 1.
LISTEN NOW TO 90MIN'S TALKING TRANSFERS PODCAST
On this edition of Talking Transfers, part of the 90min podcast network, Scott Saunders is joined by Graeme Bailey to discuss Liverpool signing Wataru Endo, Man Utd's difficulty selling players and West Ham's pursuit of Mohammed Kudus - and more!
If you can't see this embed, click here to listen to the podcast!
This article was originally published on 90min as How Sadio Mane stopped Jeremy Doku joining Liverpool.
