It’s been roughly a year and a half since Cody Gakpo signed for Liverpool, but he could easily have joined a different Premier League club a few months previously.
In an interview with ESPN, the 25-year-old recalled one match for PSV Eindhoven in August 2022 when, the day before the summer transfer deadline, he had the choice of joining Leeds or Southampton, or staying with the Eredivisie giants.
Unable to make a clear decision, he left it up to fate to decide what he’d do as he took to the pitch against Volendam, stating: “It was hectic, and it was difficult from a mental point of view. In the end I put it all in God’s hands. If I scored once, I was going to Southampton; twice and I was going to Leeds; if I scored three, I was staying.”
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Gakpo ended up scoring a hat-trick in a 7-1 win, but with the last of his goals taking a substantial deflection, he was substituted with uncertainty as to his official tally from the game before the three-goal haul was later confirmed.
He reflected: “I was sitting next to one of my close friends [on the bench] Jordan Teze. He said: ‘It’s in God’s hands if he decides it’s an own goal or not.’ At the end, it was [given as] my goal, so then it was three. I couldn’t have got a clearer sign.”
The Dutchman duly stayed at PSV for four more months until signing for Liverpool, and when prompted for his reflections on the path that he took, he summarised: “It’s worked out, yeah.”
It seems crazy to think that Gakpo would leave such a pivotal career decision up to such a high degree of chance, but in hindsight he can be very glad that he trusted his judgement on that day in August 2022 when PSV routed Volendam.
Leeds and Southampton were both relegated from the Premier League at the end of that season and coincidentally met in the Championship play-off final a year later, with the Saints winning at Wembley to secure an instant return to the top flight.
Even with Liverpool at their lowest ebb of Jurgen Klopp’s tenure when the 25-year-old joined midway through the 2022/23 campaign, he’s still gotten to play in the Champions League, win a major trophy and contend for a domestic title since coming to Anfield.
Gakpo has come in for criticism on occasion over the past few months, but on the whole he’s been a very welcome addition for the Reds, and we can be grateful that he ended up snubbing the aforementioned English clubs.
The likelihood is that he’d have left Leeds or Southampton upon their relegation from the Premier League in any case, although his goalscoring prowess might’ve kept one of those up in 2023, but ultimately we’ll never know.
What we can state with much more certainty is that the Netherlands international will hardly have any regrets about how his career has transpired over the past 18 months.
