Dominik Szoboszlai Signs New Liverpool Contract Until 2031

Dominik Szoboszlai has nailed his colours to the Liverpool mast.

The Hungary captain has signed a new contract that keeps him at Anfield until 2031, a statement deal that pushes away the early transfer noise – including talk of Real Madrid – and anchors one of Jürgen Klopp’s (and now Arne Slot’s) most valuable assets to Merseyside for his prime years.

At 25, these should be the seasons that define him. Liverpool clearly believe they’ll be doing that together.

From Leipzig talent to Anfield pillar

Szoboszlai arrived from RB Leipzig in 2023 as a highly rated, attack-minded midfielder. Three seasons on, he’s become far more than that.

Across 154 appearances, he has delivered 31 goals – many of them the kind that live long in the memory, struck from distance or finished with the swagger of a player who wants responsibility when the game tightens. Liverpool have used him everywhere across midfield and the front line. He hasn’t flinched once.

That versatility has been priceless. So has his work-rate. For club and country, Szoboszlai runs, presses, shouts, demands. He wears the armband for Hungary already, and that leadership has steadily seeped into his Liverpool performances.

Inside the dressing room, he’s no longer just the new signing with a big fee and a bigger reputation. He’s part of the long-term spine.

Echoes of Nedved – and Gerrard

The comparison that keeps coming back is a heavyweight one: Pavel Nedved. A Ballon d’Or winner, a relentless runner, a match-winner from midfield. Former Liverpool man Vladimir Smicer sees that same blend in Szoboszlai – the power, the drive, the ability to decide games from the middle of the pitch.

At Liverpool, there’s another name that inevitably enters the conversation: Steven Gerrard.

Szoboszlai wears the No.8 shirt Gerrard turned into an institution. He has started to occupy the same areas of the pitch, to hit the same kind of shots, to drag his team up the pitch in similar fashion. The parallels are obvious, even if the context is not.

Smicer, a 2005 Champions League winner who shared a dressing room with Gerrard, understands the gap. Gerrard was Liverpool. A local boy, raised in the city, carrying the weight and the heartbeat of Anfield every time he pulled on the shirt. That bond between player, club and supporters is almost impossible to replicate.

Szoboszlai, Smicer argues, doesn’t need to be a copy. He just needs to walk his own path towards that level of influence.

Smicer believes he’s on it.

The captaincy question

There is a hard decision looming at Anfield. Virgil van Dijk, the current captain and defensive colossus, is out of contract next summer. At some point, someone else will have to take the armband.

Smicer can already picture Szoboszlai stepping into that role. Asked whether Liverpool’s No.8 could succeed Van Dijk as captain, he backed the idea. Not immediately, not as a forced handover, but as a natural evolution.

Szoboszlai has only been at Liverpool for three years; Gerrard spent his entire football life there. That difference matters. Yet Smicer is convinced the trajectory is right, that Gerrard himself would enjoy watching this version of the No.8 grow into a central figure and, one day, be spoken of as his successor in spirit if not in story.

The suggestion is not that Szoboszlai will ever eclipse Gerrard in the affections of a fanbase that grew up with their captain. It’s that he can become the defining midfielder of this era, the player who carries the team into its next cycle.

Building a legacy, not chasing a ghost

Szoboszlai’s new contract underlines that Liverpool see him as a cornerstone of their future, not a stepping stone to somewhere else. The club have made an unbeaten start to the 2026-27 season across domestic and European fronts, and he sits at the heart of that momentum.

To turn admiration into legacy, he knows what has to follow: trophies. League titles. European nights that end with medals and ribbons, not regrets.

If he does that with the captain’s armband strapped to his bicep, the story sharpens. The goals, the leadership, the Nedved comparisons, the Gerrard echoes – all of it would crystallise into something more permanent.

Liverpool have tied Dominik Szoboszlai to their future. The real question now is whether he becomes the man lifting the biggest prizes when that future arrives.