Liverpool Eye €50m Finn Jeltsch for 2027 Defensive Rebuild
Liverpool’s next great centre-back might already be on the radar – but the price tag and the timing make this a fascinating gamble.
The club are quietly sketching out their plans for 2027, and the blueprint left behind by Richard Hughes comes with some glaring gaps. Nowhere is that more obvious than at the heart of defence, where the present feels fragile and the future even more so.
A defence built on uncertainty
On paper, Liverpool have five senior centre-backs. On closer inspection, every one of them comes with a question mark.
Virgil van Dijk is out of contract next summer. So is Joe Gomez. Ronald Araujo is only on loan and will walk away unless Liverpool commit €50m to make the deal permanent.
Strip those three out and the long-term picture looks alarmingly thin. Jeremy Jacquet and Giovanni Leoni are the only centre-backs definitively tied to the club beyond this season. Between them, they have age and potential. What they don’t have is certainty.
Jacquet, the older of the pair at 21, is returning from shoulder surgery. Leoni, still just 19, has spent roughly a year sidelined by a serious knee injury. Both could grow into top-level defenders. Both could just as easily need time, patience and protection.
That’s not the foundation of a title-chasing back line. It’s the outline of a rebuild.
Liverpool join race for Finn Jeltsch
So Liverpool are expected to step back into the centre-back market in 2027, and, according to TuttoJuve, they’ve already identified one of Europe’s most intriguing young options: Finn Jeltsch of Stuttgart.
The 19-year-old enjoyed a breakout season in the Bundesliga, forcing his way into the conversation as one of the continent’s standout teenage defenders. Across Europe’s top five leagues last term, only 14 teenage centre-backs reached at least 1,000 minutes. Push that bar to 1,500 minutes and the list shrinks to 10 – with Jeltsch ranking around fifth in that group according to the Value Adder model.
That kind of profile doesn’t stay under the radar. Stuttgart know exactly what they have and, according to the report, have set the starting price at €50m. Interest is already spreading across the elite: Arsenal, Manchester United and Bayern Munich are all said to be monitoring the situation.
This is not a quiet, opportunistic swoop. It’s shaping up as a full-scale bidding war.
Another kid at the back?
Here’s where the dilemma bites for Liverpool.
By 2027, the only centre-backs guaranteed to be at the club, as it stands, will have an average age of 20. Jacquet, Leoni, and potentially Jeltsch: three defenders barely out of their teens trying to anchor a club that expects to challenge on all fronts.
On one hand, that sounds reckless. A third young centre-back, at €50m, in a squad already loaded with defensive prospects? It borders on the extreme.
On the other hand, this is exactly where modern recruitment departments often believe the value lies: buy early, pay big once, and watch the asset grow. If Jeltsch continues on his current trajectory, the club that lands him now could be securing a decade of top-level defending.
So the question isn’t whether Jeltsch is a massive talent. The numbers and the interest across Europe already answer that. The question is whether Liverpool are prepared to double down on youth at the back and trust that one of football’s most demanding positions can be handled by a group still learning the game at senior level.
For now, Liverpool are in the mix, watching, weighing, running the numbers. The battle for Jeltsch is already forming. Whether they actually pull the trigger on a third prodigy at centre-back will say a lot about how bold – or how ruthless – this new era at Anfield is willing to be.
