If you think the pressure of a transfer to one of the world’s elite clubs for a fee that could reach £85m might weigh on Darwin Núñez, then you have a lot to learn about Liverpool’s new centre-forward. The Uruguayan, who completed his move to the club on Tuesday, was always ready for this. His whole – and relatively brief – career in Europe has been an unequivocal line of pressure and expectation, from when the newly flush Spanish second-tier side Almería signed him for a fee north of €5.5m shortly after his 20th birthday, in 2019.
That initial leap over from his first professional club, Peñarol, was, by Núñez’s own admission, prompted by his ambition to provide for his family, having always said he would buy his mother a substantial house after getting his first big deal. “When I was transferred to Almería that’s what I did – I bought six hectares of land and gave it to her,” he said in an interview with Uefa Champions League Weekly in February.
