From title hero to cast-off: former Bundesliga star suffers another bitter low point
With Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Jeremie Frimpong win the domestic double of league title and DFB Cup in 2023/24. In the summer of 2025, he joins Liverpool - and since then, things seem to have gone wrong. In the Netherlands national team, the next setback has now followed.
New Netherlands coach Xavi Hernandez has cut the 25-year-old full-back from the squad for Sunday's Nations League game against Serbia at 6pm. The official squad list submitted by the Dutch association to UEFA confirms it.
Frimpong had already been left out against the DFB team last Thursday in the 1-1 draw. Although the right-back was in the Netherlands squad, he spent the full 90 minutes on the bench. Against Serbia, he has now missed out on the 23-man squad altogether.
For Frimpong, the axing marks another bitter low point in a sporting crisis that has now dragged on for around a year. After winning the domestic double of the German championship and the DFB Cup with Bayer 04 Leverkusen in 2024, Liverpool secured the services of the lightning-quick right-back in the summer of 2025. The Reds paid 40 million euros to the Bundesliga club.
Under former Reds manager Arne Slot, who brought him to Anfield as a desired signing, Frimpong initially looked certain to claim the right-back spot in the back four, but persistent thigh problems soon held him back. He missed 10 of the first 16 matchdays in the Premier League through injury. By the turn of the year, that had limited him to only 11 appearances, one goal and one assist, in 27 possible competitive matches.
How many goal involvements did Jeremie Frimpong collect in his first Liverpool season?
Once he was finally able to play more often in the new year after recovering from injury, he rarely convinced. In Slot's defensive back four, at Leverkusen he had still operated as a right wing-back in a back three, the Dutchman repeatedly showed glaring weaknesses in his defending and positional play. He also lacked the hoped-for cutting edge going forward, and by the end of the season he had managed a meagre two goals and two assists in 35 appearances.
In October, immediately before Frimpong was sidelined for a longer spell because of his thigh problems, former Reds professional Don Hutchison therefore said: "I've watched every Liverpool game I could this season so far. And in some of them, like the one against Southampton (2-1 in the EFL Cup at the end of September, editor's note), he was simply giving the ball away all the time. Simple passes were going anywhere and his confidence is disappearing more and more."
Even then, Hutchison urged LFC coach Slot to drop the Dutchman and look for alternatives. "I would start (Conor) Bradley, definitely. Frimpong is not even close to the starting XI with his current performances," Hutchison said.
Why did Jeremie Frimpong miss the 2026 World Cup with the Netherlands?
Last summer, Frimpong then paid the price for his poor Liverpool season when he failed to make the Netherlands' World Cup squad. Instead, former Netherlands coach Ronald Koeman trusted Jurrien Timber (Arsenal FC) and Denzel Dumfries (Real Madrid) for the tournament in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
At club level, things still are not really running smoothly either. After new Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola used him as the preferred option at right-back at the start of the season, new signing Ronald Araujo, actually a natural centre-back, is now getting the nod there instead.
The numbers support Iraola. Liverpool conceded six goals in four games with Frimpong in the starting XI, but have not let in a single goal in three matches with Araujo starting. A circumstance that former England international Danny Murphy also criticised recently.
Murphy said on talkSport that "the full-backs" - meaning Frimpong as well as his counterpart on the left, Milos Kerkez - are "not good enough" for Liverpool's standards. "They're not getting any better either, they don't have it in them. They work hard, but the level of their crossing and their decision-making in the final third are poor."
