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Liverpool and Tottenham boost as director admits ‘exceptional talent’ will leave
With his 18th birthday approaching, with Tottenham, Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle competing to bring him to the Premier League, 2025 will be a crucial year in the career of one of football’s rising stars.
His current employers, meanwhile, are under no illusions about what the future may hold.
And while comparisons with a certain Lionel Messi have not done much good for many other wonderkids across the last decade or so, Andrija Maksimovic dazzling performances and his mesmerising left foot means that there was a sense of inevitability that he would come to be known as Red Star Belgrade’s answer to the Barcelona icon.
‘Crvena Zvezda’s Messi’, as some have labelled him.
Now, the prospect of Liverpool signing a Czech starlet likened to the Argentina captain is likely to cause some unwelcome deja vu at Anfield. A £20 million, post-Luis Suarez signing from Benfica, Lazar Markovic failed miserably to live up to the maybe unfair expectations placed upon him.
TBR understands that, despite Markovic’s rather odd career path, Liverpool have not been put off chasing Andrija Maksimovic, however. Tottenham, Chelsea and Newcastle want the Red Star sensation too, alongside Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Marseille and RB Leipzig.
Red Star know Andrija Maksimovic will leave amid Liverpool and Tottenham interest
Marko Marin is the technical director at Red Star these days.
He, like Markovic, is unfortunately destined to go down as one of football’s would-be wonderkids. Joining Chelsea back in 2012 before embarking upon a nomadic career which took him to Belgium, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Hungary, Marin is better placed than many to advise Maksimovic on which step to take next.
But Marin is also aware that – with Maksimovic free to leave Serbia when he turns 18 next June – a teenager with four senior international caps already is rapidly outgrowing a relatively small domestic pond.
“He is an exceptional talent,” Marin tells . “His football IQ is on a whole other level. Such a player is rarely seen.
“Unfortunately, I’m sure we won’t be able to hold on for long.”
Maksimovic has established himself as a regular in Red Star’s first-team since September. TBR can confirm that Liverpool have been tracking the teenager – who’s comparisons with Lionel Messi owed much to the long brown hair once sported as well as his dynamic dribbling and wand of a left boot – since the turn of the year.
Reports have indicated, meanwhile, that Red Star could demand a minimum of £12 million.
And while Messi somehow managed to retain that trademark humbleness despite blossoming into arguably the posterboy of all of world football, Maksimovic appears a little more bombastic in his own approach.
Maksimovic wants to show he is ‘better’ than Barcelona’s Yamine Lamal
He had no fears about going head-to-head with Lamine Yamal – the finest teenage talent in the game today – when Red Star hosted Barcelona in the Champions League recently.
“[Yamal and I] met at the European Championships. He’s a great player,” he told . “There was also [Pau] Cubarsi, a defender. Those are great players, my age.
“I will go out and show [Yamal] that I am better than him.
“I got [the Messi] nickname when I was little, when I had his haircut. [But] I am Andrija Maksimovic. I am not Messi.
“[Though] I would like to be like Messi, he is my idol, I watch all his games.”
Barcelona and Yamal got the last laugh on that November night in Belgrade. Hansi Flicks’s team won 5-2 while Maksimovic was brought off on the 72nd minute mark.