Liverpool have had mixed success signing players from the Bundesliga and will certainly be hoping Jeremie Frimpong doesn’t follow one infamous arrival.
For every Dominik Szoboszlai there’s been a Naby Keita, but there’s plenty of reason to expect their latest arrival won’t have any such problems.
talkSPORT understands that the Reds will trigger Frimpong’s £29.5million release clause and he will sign a five-year deal at Anfield after a stellar goal and assist laden two years at Bayer Leverkusen.
Someone who enjoyed similar success before moving from Germany to Merseyside was Sean Dundee, but with results everyone will be desperate for Frimpong to avoid.
The South Africa striker arrived in 1998 from Karlsruher where he’d scored a career-best 36 goals in 85 games and the deal seemingly made plenty of sense.
Manager Roy Evans wanted a back-up for Michael Owen with Robbie Fowler injured, yet he’d later call Dundee ‘terrible’ and a player who ‘certainly shouldn’t have joined Liverpool’.
Liverpool paid £1.5million for Dundee, and even he’s admitted he wasn’t professional enough that summer.
“It’s easy to blame different people, but I wasn’t fit enough when I went there,” he admitted years later.
“The one big mistake I made was in the break, I didn’t really do much.
“When the training started that was one of the hardest pre-seasons I’d had in my life. I took a dip in training and really struggled to get on and had to do extra sessions.”
Due to his slow start, Dundee didn’t make his Liverpool debut until October, playing seven minutes as a substitute in the League Cup against Fulham before another 11 against Valencia in the UEFA Cup.
He then finally had hope that he might stick at his boyhood club as Evans pulled him aside post-match to tell him he might start in the league at the weekend, but Dundee got injured in training the next day and required knee surgery.
Then came big mistake number two – with his legs out of action, he spent too much time in the gym on his glamour muscles.
The Durban-born star explained: “In the time I was injured my biggest mistake was doing a lot of gym work, and that slowed me down.
“I thought pumping iron was the thing to do, but I should have worked on other things.”
Upon his return from injury, Evans had been swapped out in the dugout for Houllier and Dundee made just three more brief substitute appearances in the Premier League, and that would be it, with his combined five matches totalling 55 minutes.
At the time Dundee said he’d been ‘very harshly treated’ but as time passed the now 52-year-old can only look at himself.
“When Roy left, my time there was over. Gerard didn’t want me,” he said.
“He didn’t want a lot of other players either. You have to accept that. I knew I had to leave.
“I’m not a Cristiano Ronaldo fan, but I completely respect his work ethic. He can enjoy his life when he finishes, and I should have worked more, I should have done more.
“I’m not saying I would have been the best player in the world, but I didn’t make the most of my talent.
“After training I switched myself off, I focused on other things, but the boy that goes all the way is the one who puts everything into football. I didn’t do that.”
It was heartbreaking, though, as Dundee grew up a Liverpool fan after a trial with Everton as a youngster, so when the club came calling it was a dream come true.
“I had three options, Rangers, Gladbach and Auxerre. Guy Roux, the legendary French coach, was Auxerre manager, and I was on the verge of signing for them, but I wasn’t 100 per cent sure,” he recalled.
“Then I got the call Liverpool were interested and I threw everything else out of the window. It happened pretty quickly; probably not even a week from hearing about it, it was pretty much signed and sealed.”
The dream only lasted a season for Dundee, who was shipped to Stuttgart the next summer for £1m after he rejected a January switch to Auxerre.
Regularly referenced as one of the club’s worst-ever signings, Dundee still doesn’t see the funny side two-and-a-half decades later.
“I would have loved to score a goal at Anfield. I wish the supporters had got to know me better and I could show them I was better than what they saw.
“I don’t really laugh about it. A lot of people think it was a joke, but I still support them. They have the best supporters, what else can I say?”
Now a Bundesliga commentator who also works in youth football, Dundee is hoping his struggles at Liverpool can work as a lesson for the younger generation.
“I want to help young players learn about how it is,” he said. “I’ve had the ups and downs and it’s not easy.
“There are young players now on so much money it’s scary, it’s better to stay low and concentrate on what’s important: football.”
That knowledge will prove invaluable for the next generation, but it’s hopefully a lesson Frimpong doesn’t need to learn.
