Liverpool flop named 'biggest disappointment' in official vote by fellow Bundesliga players after poor season
The former Liverpool midfielder left in 2023 and joined Werder Bremen.
Former Liverpool midfielder Naby Keita has suffered a huge career blow as he was voted as the ‘biggest disappointment of the season’ by his fellow Bundesliga players.
Having left Liverpool in 2023 on a free transfer, he quickly returned to Germany where he made his name at RB Leipzig prior to his Anfield move. Werder Bremen were happy to take on the 28-year-old but they were probably hoping for more than the 106 minutes (yes, 106) he managed to produce last season.
There were signs of this coming; his final season at Liverpool saw less than 500 minutes of action due to injuries and he was notorious for being unavailable across his Liverpool career. In the end, they were forced to accept a huge loss on their investment having originally payed over £52.75m for him in 2018.
And now his failures have been publicly outed by German media outlet Kicker, who compiled a poll of the worst players, as voted by Bundesliga players. Keita received 25.6 percent of the vote, significantly more than the next-worst, Dortmund defender Niklas Sule (13.2%). The rest of the list includes established names such as Dayot Upamecano, Leonardo Bonucci, Leon Goretzka, Kim Min-jae, Joshua Kimmich, Alphonso Davies, Robin Gosens and Donny van de Beek.
Across the season, Keita has made the headlines for the wrong reasons and he was suspended in April by the club. Bremen director Clemens Fritz said: “After Naby found out yesterday that he would not be playing from the start, he decided not to get on the bus but to go home. We will talk to him and his agent tomorrow about the consequences and how to proceed.”
It makes their midfield recruitment last summer look even better as over £150m was spent on four midfielders to replace Naby Keita, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Arthur Melo, Jordan Henderson and Fabinho. The new quartet totalled nearly 10,000 minutes of action for the 2023/24 campaign compared to the 7100 from the five midfielders that left. It was good business but the future for Keita at the top level seems to be bleak as his current reputation is far from where it was a few years ago.