Núñez is a free agent eyeing Liverpool, but reports of a done deal are premature

A year after Liverpool cashed in on him, Darwin Núñez is a free agent and, by his own admission, missing the place. That combination has set off one of the noisier sagas of the early window, with a report out of Uruguay insisting a sensational Anfield return is already wrapped up. The people who track Liverpool’s business most closely are not convinced, and the gap between the two versions is worth picking apart before anyone gets carried away.

How Núñez ended up without a club

The bare facts are not in dispute. Núñez left Saudi side Al-Hilal this summer after barely a season, his contract torn up by mutual agreement. The unravelling started in February, when Al-Hilal signed Karim Benzema and the Saudi Pro League’s cap of ten foreign players forced a reshuffle. Núñez lost his place in the registered squad, sat out the back half of the campaign, and by the time the window opened both club and player wanted out of the arrangement. He is now available on a free, which changes the maths for any club that fancies a punt on a 26-year-old with a point to prove.

It is a steep fall for a striker Liverpool once made their most expensive signing. They paid Benfica an initial £64 million for him in 2022, a fee that could climb past £80 million with add-ons, and across three seasons he gave them moments of genuine danger without ever nailing down the consistency the price tag demanded. He still left with a Premier League winner’s medal from his final year before the move to the Gulf for around £47 million.

Why a Liverpool reunion is not as mad as it sounds

On paper a club selling a player and re-signing him twelve months later looks like an admission of error. In practice the logic is simpler. Núñez would cost nothing in transfer terms, his wages are the only real outlay, and a squad that runs deep into a long season can always use a forward who stretches defences and presses from the front. He has also made no secret of wanting back into European football after his Saudi spell stalled, and Liverpool is the club he keeps coming back to in interviews.

He is not short of suitors either. Chelsea, Newcastle and Tottenham have all been credited with interest in a striker who arrives without a fee attached, which is exactly the kind of low-risk gamble that tends to attract a crowd. That competition is part of why the Uruguayan reports have landed with such force, and part of why they should be treated with care.

Where the ‘done deal’ talk falls down

The claim of a completed return traces back to a Uruguayan journalist with good lines into the national team camp, and it spread quickly because it is the kind of story everyone wants to be true. The trouble is that the reporters closest to Liverpool have not backed it up. Fabrizio Romano, whose word tends to settle these things, has played the whole thing down and indicated nothing is actively progressing, while sources around the player have pushed back on the idea that anything is signed.

There is a practical reason for the quiet too. Núñez is with Uruguay at the World Cup, where Marcelo Bielsa’s side opened with a frustrating draw against Saudi Arabia, and a player in the middle of a tournament rarely wants his future settled in public mid-campaign. None of that rules out a move. It just means the honest read today is that Liverpool could re-sign him, that he would welcome it, and that the deal advertised as done is nothing of the sort yet.

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