Ibrahima Konate has shown his love for the Reds on Instagram after posting a story with You’ll Never Walk Alone as the backtrack to him filming his home for the holidays.
The French defender sealed a £36million move to Anfield at the end of May and is set to start the new season for Liverpool alongside Virgil van Dijk and he has endeared himself to supporters on social media already.
He shared a video, which has been shared countless times to Twitter, of him playing You’ll Never Walk Alone in the background while filming his holiday home which features a red flare and a Liverpool flag on the balcony.
It’s good enough that 22-year-old will come in and solve a defensive nightmare that saw Liverpool succumb to a third-place Premier League finish but it looks as though he is delighted to be moving to Merseyside.
Ibrahima Konate on Instagram sharing a video with "You'll Never Walk Alone" playing in the background. He is excited about playing for Liverpool! pic.twitter.com/fbfY8sr5m3
— DaveOCKOP (@DaveOCKOP) June 22, 2021
As we reported on the 11th of May, Konate will go straight into the Liverpool starting XI as Jurgen Klopp and his medical staff want to slowly introduce Joe Gomez into the side after concerns emerged over his patellar tendon injury.
It’s extremely rare for players to suffer both an ACL rupture and a tear of the patellar tendon and this unique and unfortunate situation means that Gomez will need to be kept under close watch to minimise his chances of re-injury.
ACL ruptures are awful but tearing your patellar tendon is actually worse.
We spoke to Dr. Rajpal Brar, who you can find on Twitter or at 3CB Performance, and he told us: “The patellar tendon is an active mover and takes on significantly more load than the ACL (which is a “passive constraint”, it’s not contracting rather just passively stretching to control knee joint stability).
“It’s a really strong tendon that’s important to basic knee movements so that’s why it’s a tough injury to deal with.”
While Konate’s injury history does raise eyebrows and his game is certainly not perfect, there is a feeling at Anfield that he has the potential to be one of the best centre-backs in Europe.
Playing and training alongside Virgil van Dijk will certainly help him develop and raise his game.
His passing is one of his weakest points as he can often be too careful with his pass selection and while he rarely panics under pressure, he would need to learn to take more risks at Liverpool.
Aerially, Konate has virtually no peer. Not only does he stand at 6ft4, he has a massive leap and is as strong as they come, with the defender reportedly weighing in at 95kg.
A partnership between Konate and van Dijk would be incredible to watch and it seems highly unlikely that the pair would concede from set-pieces or from crosses from open play.