Liverpool's quest to sign Piotr Zielinski has hit a serious hitch after Udinese rejected their £9.2m bid for the Poland international.

Jurgen Klopp has been tracking Zielinski, who was part of the Poland squad that reached the quarter-finals of Euro 2016, since January and has been determined to recruit the 22-year-old during the summer window.

The situation, however, has become complicated. Napoli are rival bidders for Zielinski and have made the same €11m plus add-ons offer to Udinese. The Italians have accepted Napoli’s identical package but, curiously, turned down Liverpool’s offer.

Zielinski, though, has made it clear that he does not want to join Napoli. He has his heart set on a move to Liverpool but if Udinese continue to be obdurate and do want to do business with Liverpool, Zielinski will stay where is.

He has two years left on his contract with Udinese but there is little prospect of him a signing an extension with them, so the decision Udinese must take is whether they allow Zielinski to run his terms down but see his value drop in 12 months’ time.

Liverpool, who returned to pre-season training on Saturday, have already four signings during this window – Joel Matip, Marko Grujic, Loris Karius and Sadio Mane – but it is now looking unlikely they will be joined by Mahmoud Dahoud.

Dahoud, a highly-regarded midfielder, is someone whom Liverpool have been pursuing aggressively but the indications at this stage are that he will remain with Borussia Moenchengladbach for this window.

Source: MailOnline

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