Liverpool have confirmed that Sepp van den Berg will spend another season out on loan in Germany.
The club announced on their official website that the 21-year-old will be at Mainz 05 in the Bundesliga for the upcoming campaign, having also played in the division for Schalke 04 last term.
The Dutchman becomes the sixth player loaned out by the Reds this summer, following on from Calvin Ramsay (Preston), Rhys Williams (Aberdeen), Harvey Davies (Crewe), Fabio Carvalho (RB Leipzig) and Owen Beck (Dundee).
Van den Berg is now entering his fifth year as a Liverpool player but he’s still made just four senior appearances for the club, all of which came in domestic cup competitions during the 2019/20 season (Transfermarkt).
Loans at Preston and Schalke followed, and his progress in Gelsenkirchen was cruelly halted last autumn by an ankle ligament injury which ruled him out for several months (Transfermarkt). When he came back, he wasn’t quite able to save him team from Bundesliga relegation.
Hopefully he’ll enjoy better fortune on both an individual and collective level this term – the latter should come to him, given that Mainz have finished in the top half of the table for the last two seasons and even been in the mix for European qualification for some of that.
Former Liverpool underage coach Neil Critchley previously dubbed Van den Berg ‘very cool and calm on the ball’ and ‘really assured’ (Evening Standard), comments made when the Dutchman was still just a teenager, so he’s bound to have become even more comfortable now that he boasts experience in a major league.
With the firm possibility of some centre-back exits from Anfield in 2024, the 21-year-old may finally work his way into Jurgen Klopp’s reckoning on a regular basis next year if his latest German loan move goes well for him. Let’s hope that it does after the misfortune of 2022/23.