Despite being tipped for big things when he joined Liverpool, Tiago Ilori left the club in 2017 without making any Premier League appearances.
One potential option for strengthening Liverpool’s centre-back in the not-too-distant future could be Sporting Lisbon.
Goncalo Inacio has been linked to the Reds multiple times in recent transfer windows, and the ECHO has previously expressed their admiration for his teammate, Ousmane Diomande.
But should Liverpool actually ever sign either player, they will hope that they fare considerably better than the previous two times they have bought from Sporting Lisbon.
The Reds first turned to the Portuguese outfit in January 2012, snapping up Joao Carlos Teixeira in an £830,000 deal after he had impressed against the club in the 2011/12 NextGen Series.
Once recovered, the playmaker, hailed as the ‘New Deco’, impressed at youth level and, despite an underwhelming loan move to Brentford during the first half of the 2013/14 season, made his Liverpool debut as a substitute in a 3-2 victory over Fulham in February 2014.
The following year, he would impress on loan in the Championship with Brighton & Hove Albion only to see his campaign ended prematurely by a broken foot.
And while it would take the appointment of Jurgen Klopp for Teixeira to be handed a first team look-in in 2015/16, it soon became clear that he would leave the club the following summer at the end of his contract.
Liverpool ended up pocketing £250,000 compensation when Teixeira joined FC Porto, having made only eight appearances for the club and scored only once. Yet that was still more of an impact than the second Sporting Lisbon player to move to Anfield.
It was August 2013 when former manager Brendan Rodgers completed a double deadline day swoop to land Mamadou Sakho from Paris Saint-Germain for £18m and a 20-year-old Tiago Ilori in a £7m deal from Sporting Lisbon. In doing so, he claimed to have sorted out the Reds’ backline for the next 10 years.
“I wanted to try to protect the present and the future of the club,” Rodgers said at the time. “Centre-halves are so hard to find. You look at some teams and they have ageing centre-halves because it is a struggle to get a really good one.
“We were fortunate in that two became available, one that we had been tracking for a year in Tiago Ilori, a young talent but who can be a big talent.
“He is 6ft 3in, super quick, power, can jump, and he just needs to adapt to the pace and physicality of the Premier League. He is one for the future, but he can be a really big talent.
“Sakho is 23 but he is an experienced player. He has senior international caps and looks an absolute monster in training. He is one who is ready for now and that is what we want.
“We had a chance to do that and protect the club for maybe the next ten years and that is what we have done.”
Alas, Rodgers’ lofty prediction never came close to coming true. Sakho’s rollercoaster Anfield career is well-documented, as the Frenchman found himself bombed out by Klopp and eventually departed for Crystal Palace on a permanent basis in a £26m deal at the end of August 2017.
He had lasted four years, making 80 appearances, with his last outing coming in April 2016. Yet such a total was 77 more than the man who had been touted by Rodgers to be his long-term centre-back partner.
Ilori was highly-rated prior to his move to Anfield, to the extent that the FA were hoping to persuade the London-born defender to switch international allegenices from Portugal to England. Yet despite Rodgers claiming to have been tracking the centre-back for a year prior to signing him, the £7m man never even made an appearance under the Northern Irishman.
Unused during the first half of the 2013/14 season following his move to Anfield, Ilori made just three matchday squads before being sent to spend the second half of that season on loan at Granada. He made nine appearances there, before registering 15 appearances on loan at Bordeaux during the 2014/15 campaign.
“I want to play for Liverpool,” Ilori said in August 2015, following his return from France and having reached the final of the Under-21s European Championship with Portugal that summer. “I don’t want to be in Liverpool just to be sitting around.
“My objective is the same as every other player, we all want to play so everyone’s going to fight for their place. I joined Liverpool two seasons ago to play for Liverpool, that is my number one objective so I’m going to do everything to make that happen.”
Less than two weeks later, he found himself sent out on loan again as he joined Aston Villa on transfer deadline day. Yet he failed to make an appearance for the Premier League side before being recalled early in January 2016.
By this point, Klopp was now Liverpool manager, with the German embarrassingly admitting he had previously had no idea that Ilori was even a Reds player.
“When I first came here I didn’t know he was an LFC player to be honest. Of course not, he was at Aston Villa,” he said. “Time after time I got information about all the players who were on loan, I saw him, a centre-half, and you heard about the problems and you know he didn’t play at Aston Villa, not even in the second team.
“We got him here and you see then the potential. That’s good but they have all to learn, all to improve but they gave the sign but it is one sign.”
Ilori made his debut as part of a makeshift centre-back pairing alongside Jose Enrique against Exeter City in the FA Cup, before starting the-third round replay at Anfield. He’d then make what would prove to be the final of his three appearances for Liverpool as they lost to West Ham United in the fourth round.
Not that he knew that at the time. Speaking after the game, he revealed how he hoped to force his way into Klopp’s first-team plans.
“I’ve had a few chances to play, which is great,” he said. “I always thought there could be a future here. That’s why I signed for Liverpool in the first place. I just try and work hard every day.
“Players get experience by playing. I played alongside Lucas and he didn’t look at me and think: ‘he’s not as experienced’ and I didn’t look at him and think: ‘he’s the most experienced player’.
“We all play together, we train together every day and we’re a team. There are a lot of good players at Liverpool for me to learn from. I just take it step by step.”
Klopp might have seen the potential, but that didn’t make Ilori part of his plans. Never playing for Liverpool again, he was sold to Championship side Reading for £3.75m in January 2018. He would depart having never played in the Premier League.
Despite returning to Portugal and to Sporting in January 2019, his fortunes did not improve. Featuring just 24 times, he joined Lorient on loan in February 2021 but failed to make an appearance as injury disrupted his time in France. 12 appearances would follow on loan at Boavista in 2021/22, while he made four appearances on loan Pacos de Ferreira in 2022/23 before being sent back prematurely in the January of that campaign.
While he would train with Sporting during the second half of the campaign, he was not registered in their squad and did not play as a result. Come August, his contract was terminated despite having a year still to run.
After nearly five months as a free agent, Ilori would at least find a new club at the end of December 2023. He had to drop down a level though, signing a short-term contract with Belenenses in Liga Portugal 2 until the end of the season.
Now 31, Ilori has never looked like becoming the ‘big talent’ for the future Rodgers predicted he could be. Throw in Sakho’s failings and it was a poorly-invested £25m from Liverpool, with their defensive issues only rectified following Klopp’s arrival and the signing of Virgil van Dijk in 2018.
So much for Rodgers ‘protecting the club’ for the next ten years. Had they lived up to such hype, they could still be at Anfield now. Instead, neither Sakho or Ilori played for the Reds after 2016.
And while the Frenchman’s fall from grace is understandable, the Portuguese’s is shrouded in mystery. Over 10 years on from joining Liverpool, he remains an unknown at Anfield.
He would touch on his struggles and frustrations at Anfield in an interview with Reading’s matchday programme in September 2018, admitting he made the wrong decision to join the Reds when he did.
“I played 12-13 games in a row (at Sporting) and then that’s when I first heard about Liverpool’s interest,” he recalled. “I was negotiating a new contract with Sporting at the time,I had the equivalent of a youth team contract at the time, they were trying to adjust that.
“The club had some financial problems as well and we couldn’t come to an agreement at the time. There was a change of president at the club as well, so he had his ideas about how to get things done – there was a lot going on at the time.
“Then there was some interest from abroad and Liverpool showed more interest than anyone else. I broke my hand so I didn’t have a pre-season at Sporting, then I seem to have been punished for not signing a deal. Being young and stupid really, I reacted. I was willing to sign the deal, but then I was thinking if they were treating me like this then I wanted to leave.
“Looking back now, I think it would have done me good staying another season. It was easy playing there, I was comfortable, they knew me and they knew what I was about. I was a young 19-year-old in the sense that, football-wise, I hadn’t played many games at a professional level. And from there to playing for Liverpool was a big step.
“It’s not that I couldn’t do it, but looking back now, maybe after another full season in Portugal and I would have gone into the next season with some confidence from the campaign before. Hopefully I’d have been able to get 20-30 games in at least, then that would have been different for me.”
He continued: “It was an unbelievable experience for me, the feeling I had when I signed for Liverpool. I only really understood what was happening months afterwards really, walking into training and looking at the players who were there at the time – Suarez, Coutinho was young but he was already unbelievable, Gerrard obviously, Sturridge was on fire as well.
“It was definitely tough. I was in the squad at the beginning and I felt that the coach (Brendan Rodgers) really liked me. It just didn’t happen, it didn’t work – my fault, obviously, because I’m the one who had to prove that I needed to play.
“In my head I was looking too short-term – I didn’t realise the work I’d have to put in. So when someone would tell me that within the next two years I would be starting for Liverpool, I was thinking, why can’t I be in there in the next two months?
“I should have gone there and had a plan. Obviously if I got the chance to play straight away I would, but over the next couple of years I would develop to a point physically and mentally, then be integrated within the club to be able to play and compete in every game. It was probably just an age thing, I’m looking back trying to find a reason but I don’t know why!”
Meanwhile, his loan move to Bordeaux in 2014 was unexpected, with Ilori admitting that derailed him in France as he reflected on his struggles with the club and eventual permanent Anfield exit.
