Liverpool quietly secure the next great Anfield playmaker – and he’s already in the building.
For a decade, Philippe Coutinho has been the reference point. The benchmark. The image that flickers in supporters’ minds whenever a Liverpool midfielder drops into a pocket of space, turns on the half‑turn and dares to thread the impossible pass.
His exit was messy. His legacy is not.
Coutinho’s departure funded Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker, the spine of a Champions League and Premier League-winning side. Barcelona paid the price, Liverpool reaped the rewards, and the story has long since been filed under “good business”. But strip away the balance sheets and you’re left with the footballer: a slight Brazilian who treated tight spaces like a stage and the No.10 role like his own private canvas.
He glided past defenders. He saw passes others didn’t even consider. He bent games to his imagination. At Anfield, that kind of sorcery leaves a mark.
Wirtz and the weight of a throne
So when Liverpool spent big on Florian Wirtz, the comparison felt inevitable. At last, many thought, here was the heir to Coutinho’s throne. A gifted German creator arriving with a highlight reel full of disguised passes, drifting runs and Bundesliga brilliance.
But English football has not rolled out the red carpet.
While Coutinho settled quickly, Wirtz has looked like a player still searching for his rhythm. The tempo has caught him. The decisions aren’t quite sharp enough, the confidence not quite flowing. The version that tore up the Bundesliga has yet to fully appear in a Liverpool shirt.
How to unlock him is already shaping up as one of the defining questions of Andoni Iraola’s tenure at Anfield. Solve it, and Liverpool’s attack gains a new dimension. Fail, and the entire project risks feeling incomplete.
Behind the scenes, though, another storyline has been quietly taking shape.
Erik Farkas: the Coutinho echo in the academy
Liverpool went into this summer with two academy priorities circled in red ink: Joshua Abe and Erik Farkas. Two teenagers, two of the most highly regarded talents in the system, and two players attracting serious attention from clubs across England and abroad.
Lose them, and the club would be gifting away a slice of its future. Keep them, and the pathway from Kirkby to Anfield remains alive and convincing.
Abe committed earlier in the summer, signing his first professional deal. On Friday, Liverpool confirmed they had reached agreement with Farkas on his own professional contract. No fanfare, no parade – just a line of text that could prove far more significant than it looks.
Because Farkas is not just another promising youngster. Inside the club, many see shades of Coutinho in the way he plays.
He operates between the lines, where the game is most congested and most dangerous. He has the vision to pick the pass that unpicks a deep block, the technical quality to execute it, and the calm to make it look routine. Defences that sit in and wait to suffer often find him slipping through them.
Watch him closely and the resemblance becomes hard to ignore. The disguise on the through balls. The angles he sees. Those passes with the outside of his foot, curved into space as if guided, not struck. It’s the same trick Coutinho once used to carve open Premier League back lines, now rehearsed on academy pitches in Liverpool red.
He is not Coutinho. No teenager should carry that burden. But the profile is there: a pure technician, a natural creator, a player who treats the ball as something to be shaped rather than simply moved.
For coaches and scouts, he is a joy to study. For team-mates, he is the player who makes runs worth making. For Liverpool, he is now a secured asset for the foreseeable future.
The next act in Liverpool’s creative lineage
This is why the Farkas deal matters. In a summer dominated by big names and big fees, Liverpool have quietly locked in a different kind of win: the kind that can define a squad three or four years from now.
If Iraola solves the Wirtz puzzle, Liverpool will have their marquee creator in the here and now. If Farkas continues his rise, they might also have the next great Anfield playmaker already learning his trade in their own academy.
One carries the price tag. The other carries the echo of a magician who once lit up this stadium.
Liverpool have been searching for their new Coutinho for years. The twist might be that the closest thing to him has just signed his first professional contract, still a teenager, still unknown to most of the crowd filing into Anfield on a Saturday afternoon.
That won’t last forever.
