The Guinea international will join the Reds from next season after the Merseysiders forked out a club-record £48m to activate the clause in the playmaker’s contract.
And Leipzig CEO Oliver Mintzlaff has been left ruing that development, telling Kicker magazine: “We would have never given Naby Keita away if it had not been for the release clause.
“When we agreed on the clause, we did not presume that only after a few months there’d be a club willing to pay significantly more.”