While a pre-season friendly isn't always the best way to make a final assessment regarding a player, several football fans have decided to do just that after watching Darwin Nunez's debut game for Liverpool.
The Uruguayan sensation donned the Reds jersey for the first time after coming on as a second-half substitute during their friendly clash with Manchester United in Bangkok. The former Benfica ace was introduced in and around the hour mark and was visibly adamant on making his mark.
Unfortunately for the 23-year-old, he failed to get on the scoresheet and even went viral after missing a clear-cut opportunity to score. This came in the final five minutes of the game, with the Merseyside giants chasing a consolatory goal or two after going 4-0 down against their bitter rivals.
In this opportunity, the ball fortunately fell to Nunez after Mohamed Salah's lovely curled short ricocheted of the post. While it was not an open goal, Tom Heaton, who came on as a sub for David de Gea after Manchester United's Spanish goalkeeper picked up a knock, was on the floor and unable to recover after leaping to stop Salah's shot. Additionally, Bailly could not get across in time to block Darwin's shot.
Despite all of this, the $108.6M signing failed to find the back of the net, instead blasting his shot way over the crossbar. This sparked several trolls and memes on social media, with football fans on Twitter – as usual – flocking to the social media platform to poke fun at the Uruguayan over his horrible miss and poor debut performance. Check out the best tweets below.
€100m striker Darwin Nunez missed from here… pic.twitter.com/HWSrzKtlhv
— FootballFunnys (@FootballFunnnys) July 12, 2022
Rival fans are going to feast on this photo of Darwin Nunez missing pic.twitter.com/hqVj3gNcdB
— ODDSbible (@ODDSbible) July 12, 2022
Darwin Nunez has officially signed for Liverpool !! #MUNLIV pic.twitter.com/PeH31NaSIv
— Ibukun Aluko (@IbkSports) July 12, 2022
Decided not to comment until after the game and I'm going to shamelessly say two things.
— UtdFaithfuls (@UtdFaithfuls) July 12, 2022
1). Man Utd dodged a bullet in Darwin Nunez.
2). Don't care if it's just pre-seaaon, we're winning the Premier League
DARWIN NUNEZ wasn't joking in training! I repeat DARWIN NUNEZ wasn't joking in training.
— Kwame Benaiah (@kwamebenaiah) July 12, 2022
Darwin Nunez missed this sitter
— CR7 Rap Rhymes (@cr7raprhymes) July 12, 2022
pic.twitter.com/5M4m35gBwo
Darwin Nunez is the Uruguayan Timo Werner pic.twitter.com/xpQeojz6Bc
— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) July 12, 2022
It should also be pointed out that this miss comes after a clip of Nunez during Liverpool's shooting drill went viral as the South American could be seen terribly missing the target.
This the 100m player we paid for? pic.twitter.com/79qYbqUCdN
— (@Wimlfc) July 11, 2022
Nonetheless, Jurgen Klopp will not be worried but what he saw as this was their first game in pre-season. Liverpool will now prepare for an interesting encounter with Crystal Palace in Singapore before heading to Germany to lock horns with RB Leipzig on July 21.