A leading football journalist has claimed that his inadvertent intervention led to the Premier League champions changing their mind on a transfer.
Liverpool turned down the opportunity to sign a future England player and Premier League star under then-manager Jurgen Klopp when the media deflected his destiny into a whole new direction.
The summer transfer window is well underway and big moves are happening all over Europe. Young players are packing their bags and heading off into the unknown of pastures new.
But of all the factors that go into the decisions made by clubs at this time of year, outside input is usually one that's overlooked.
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On a recent episode of the Libero podcast, respected English football journalist Rory Smith revealed that the actions of reporters can have a direct effect on business negotiations between football clubs and can even alter the future paths of the players involved.
"I once stopped James Maddison signing for Liverpool," admitted Smith. "So getting stories can genuinely have an impact.
"They were looking at him when he was at Coventry [City] and they made a bid and I happened to be speaking to a friend of mine who was running Coventry at the time who mentioned that they'd had this offer from Liverpool for James Maddison, this 19-year-old who I think at that stage everyone thought was going to be really good but he wasn't a superstar.
"And basically Liverpool, when it got kind of leaked into the public domain, I was told years later, Liverpool got annoyed because they thought that Coventry were trying to do it to smoke out interest."
A fiercely proud Coventrian, Maddison signed instead for Norwich City and was loaned back to the Sky Blues briefly before somehow maintaining his popularity in his hometown despite a five-year spell up the M69 at Leicester City.
He won the FA Cup with the Foxes, managed at the time by former Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers, but was later persuaded to stay in the top division by moving to Tottenham Hotspur.
Maddison added the Europa League to his winner's medal from Wembley last month and has collected seven England caps since his debut as a Leicester player in 2019.
Without the Spurs star, now 28, Liverpool went on to win the Premier League twice as well as the Champions League in 2018-19, beating Spurs in the final.
He's a quality player but Reds fans won't be holding much of a grudge against Smith for his influence in the transfer market.
Topics: Premier League, Football, Champions League, Liverpool, James Maddison, Tottenham Hotspur
Chris Nee