Roberto Firmino’s future has been a topic of speculation, with BBC pundit Michael Brown suggesting that the Brazilian has already agreed to join a new club.
Brown shared his thoughts on the BBC Radio Five Live Football Daily Podcast, questioning why news of Firmino’s departure from Liverpool was announced at this point in time. Brown suggested that Firmino may have agreed a deal with a club outside of England, or that Liverpool may have informed him that they will not be offering him a new deal.
He said:
“I think I look at it and say why have they announced it now? Why is that news coming out right now? Is it a club out of England that he’s agreed a deal with? Have the club told him that they will not offer him a deal? I think there’ll be a lot of Premier League clubs who want to take him, and when it comes to a head this early it generally seems that you have a deal in place.”
However, Firmino’s agent, Roger Wittmann, has disputed these claims, stating that the player has refused to hold talks with any clubs before deciding on his future at Liverpool. Wittmann explained that Firmino wants to give the club, manager, and fans a respectful farewell, and his focus for the next few weeks is to show Liverpool his best version. Wittmann also clarified that Firmino is not motivated by financial terms or other clubs and has not started comparing offers from different clubs.
Wittmann told Football Insider:
“Our plan for the next couple of weeks – this is the plan of Roberto – is to show the manager and Liverpool finally again the best version of him to say goodbye. This is what he wants to do.
“He has no clue what that means for him in the near future. He told us during the whole phase when we negotiated, ‘I don’t want to talk to anybody else, there’s no need to do that’. He said it was a decision with the club.
“This was the first time in my life he’s a free agent player and he said there was no need to talk to others! So he’s not motivated by other clubs or by financial terms – far away from that.
“The club gave him the time as well, no pressure. And he never started to compare asking us to talk to different clubs. For us [it would be] easy but this was not his intention, it was just to find his own way. This is so far away from this normal business, believe me!”
Despite the interest from Premier League and European clubs, Firmino’s most likely destination would be Europe, as a recent report suggested that he would not want to play for another English club. As a soon-to-be free agent, Firmino will undoubtedly have plenty of suitors once the season comes to an end.