Surprise Liverpool star hailed as ‘best signing in past 12 years’

Ralf Rangnick has hailed Liverpool star Ibrahima Konate as one of RB Leipzig‘s best-ever signings.

After helping Liverpool cement top spot in the Premier League with a comfortable win over Aston Villa on Saturday, the 25-year-old has travelled back to his home country to link up with the French national team.

Konate has become a settled presence in Arne Slot’s side and will look to finally, consistently break into Didier Deschamps’ starting XI for Les Bleus. The centre-back is enjoying a brilliant season and will soon be rewarded with a new Liverpool contract as well.

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The Frenchman is enjoying one of the best moments of his career at present and his name has taken pride of place in French media in recent days. Konate has spoken to Canal+ about his career and, as part of the broadcast, he was shown a video message from his former boss at RB Leipzig, Ralf Rangnick.

Konate named one of Leipzig’s best ever

In said video, Rangnick waxed lyrical about the defender and the former Man Utd interim manager even went so far as to say that Konate was perhaps the best signing Leipzig have made over the past 12 years.

“I remember very well the day our scouting department in Leipzig showed clips from your Sochaux days,” Rangnick said. “I instantly fell in love with your game. I saw straight away you were an amazing person and player with a top-class upbringing. All of the latter proved true. You are without doubt the best signing, or one of the best signings, we did at Leipzig in the last 12 years.“

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This is exceptionally high praise considering the amount of talent Leipzig have acquired and turned into world-class players. The likes of Dominik Szoboszlai, Christopher Nkunku, Joshua Kimmich, Josko Gvardiol and Naby Keita were all signed in the timeframe Rangnick mentioned.

“He’s an extremely important person to me,” Konate responded after watching the Austria head coach’s video.