Liverpool close to capturing Babel
By Sam Wallace
Published: 09 July 2007
Liverpool made their second major move in the summer transfer
market yesterday with a bid for the highly rated Dutch winger Ryan
Babel. The club were understood to have offered around 10m
(£6.75m) for the Ajax attacker, who was also a target for Arsenal
and Newcastle.
Babel, 20, has attracted interest from all over Europe but it seems
Rafa Benitez, the Liverpool manager, wants to make him the club's
second significant signing of the close season after Fernando
Torres. The player impressed in the Netherlands Under-21 team who
won the European Championship on home soil last month and is
regarded as the best of a crop of outstanding young Dutch
talent.
He has already been capped by the full Netherlands side, scoring on
his debut against Romania in March 2005, while the national team
manager Marco van Basten has said Babel has the potential to be the
next Thierry Henry.
Liverpool already have four first-team strikers in Torres, Peter
Crouch, Dirk Kuyt and Andrei Voronin, but Babel is more adaptable
and can be used as a winger. Benitez has said before that wide
players are his priority this summer and he seems to have lost out
on Florent Malouda, who will join Chelsea this week.
Ajax have not yet accepted Liverpool's bid for Babel, but it is
close to their valuation of the striker.
http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/premiership/article2747775.ece
Ryan "Bubble" Babel? 
He's not bad in my FM07
game.
