If Naby Keita hoped that leaving Liverpool would reinvigorate his career, things at Werder Bremen haven’t exactly gone to plan since that transfer.
He’s made a paltry five appearances all season, with a continuation of the injury woes which afflicted his time at Anfield (Transfermarkt), and now he could be facing the wrath of his current club’s bosses.
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As per The Mirror, the 29-year-old reacted to discovering that he wouldn’t start against Bayer Leverkusen on Sunday – a fixture that his team lost 5-0, with the victors duly clinching the Bundesliga title – by refusing to board the team bus and instead storming off home.
Werder’s sporting director Clemens Fritz has said that he will speak to Keita and his agent ‘about the consequences’ of his action and ‘how to proceed’.
Keita showed glimpses of considerable talent during his five years at Liverpool, but unfortunately those were all too sporadic amid a dreadful injury record.
It came as a surprise to no-one that his contract was allowed to expire last year, and his miserable time in Germany suggests that the Anfield hierarchy were right to part ways with him.
Jurgen Klopp absolutely wouldn’t stand for the act of petulance that the Guinea midfielder committed over the weekend, and we’d like to think that the next Reds manager won’t tolerate it either.
Having been Liverpool’s club-record signing when he arrived for £52.75m in 2018, it was a real shame that Keita’s potential was never fulfilled on Merseyside.
He won’t have done himself any favours with his recent actions, either, but we hope for his sake that he’ll learn from it and that a once-promising career won’t peter out to nothingness for a player who’s yet to hit his 30s.