Right-back to the future

JEREMIE FRIMPONG is the Flying Dutchman who doesn't speak Dutch.

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Frimpong will become Trent Alexander-Arnold’s replacement at Liverpool after the Premier League champions agreed to meet the £30million release clause in his Bayer Leverkusen contract.

He is expected to complete the move to link up with countrymen Arne Slot, Virgil van Dijk, Cody Gakpo and Ryan Gravenberch in the next few days after Bayer end their Bundesliga campaign against Mainz.

Slot wants to add more pace to his team after seeing them struggle to contain an energetic Paris Saint-Germain side in the Champions League - and Frimpong fits the bill.

But the Liverpool manager will have to communicate with his new signing in English.

Frimpong was born in Amsterdam to Ghanaian parents but moved to Manchester with his mum and siblings at the age of seven after they divorced.

That prompted him to lose his Dutch language skills.

Frimpong, who chose to sign for Manchester City rather than Liverpool when he was a promising schoolboy player because the club's training ground was just a bus ride away, chose Holland over Ghana when he was first selected for the country of his birth by Louis van Gaal ahead of the 2022 World Cup.