As day broke on Friday morning, and the dust settled after a nail-biting midnight auction, it seemed the deal was done: Moises Caicedo would sign for Liverpool, to the tune of a mammoth £111million.
The Brighton midfielder has attracted attention throughout the transfer window, with Chelsea long the likely frontrunners for the talented 21-year-old's signature.
But a lingering question-mark remains over the player's future, with the Blues looking in a stronger position than ever after Caicedo is said to have second thoughts over joining the Reds.
One thing is for sure.
If either club signs an agreement with the player for that stratospheric sum, the Ecuadorian starlet becomes the sixth-most expensive player in history.
But where did the now-British record signing come from? And who are the important figures in his life? Here, Mail Sport shares details on the rise and rise of Moises Caicedo.
Moises Caicedo will become the sixth-most expensive player of all time when he signs for Liverpool after a fierce bidding war
The midfielder's meteoric rise has come with the support of his girlfriend Paola Salazar (left) and his parents (pictured in Brighton)
The £111million player has a close and emotive relationship with his family (pictured in 2017)
A hardscrabble childhood - and a prodigal rise
Caicedo hails from the Mujer Trabadora district in Santo Domingo, a bustling city nestled in the foothills of the Andes, where he first started playing at the age of five.
Resources were hard to come by in the neighbourhood, which still struggles with gang trouble and is home to a number of families living below the poverty line. As per , Caicedo and his team-mates would often score through goals marked out by rocks or other makeweights, and not all of the children would always have shoes.
But at 13, the player made the step up, joining a local academy affiliated with an amateur team called Jaipadida.
Professional football came calling in the form of an offer from Espoli, but that fell through after the side were relegated from - and a number of Caicedo's trials with other teams were unsuccessful before he was sent to Independiente del Valle.
Caicedo's rise in the capital city, Quito, where Independiente is based, slot resmi was far from meteoric.
A few months into his time at the club, he suffered a ruptured ACL, which sidelined him for 10 months at the age of 16. But as he recovered, his form grew stronger and stronger, and less than two years later, he made his senior team debut.
Still playing for the club's youth team, he won the Under-20 Copa Libertadores with the side in 2020, another in a string of bright spots which first caught the eye of Brighton's scouts.
His team-mates called him 'the Octopus' for his dazzling abilities swiping the ball from his opponents, and Caicedo himself - a childhood Man United fan - compared his style to Paul Pogba.
The player joined Independiente del Valle's academy in 2016 and later featured for both their youth side - with whom he won the U20 Copa Libertadores - and senior team
Caicedo featured in a barnstorming Copa Libertadores against Brazilian side Flamengo in 2020, scoring one of their five goals
That year, the then-18 year old received his first call-up for the Ecuadorian national team
Paying back the communities that raised him
Brighton weren't the only club in pursuit of the player's signature, but in signing him in 2021, the club won themselves a rare talent.
After an initial season-long loan to Belgium top-flight side Beerschot, Caicedo flourished at the south coast club with the appointment of De Zerbi - but even signing a new bumper contract in February couldn't put the breaks on Caicedo's limitless ambition.
But with his landmark move to Liverpool comes an enormous windfall for not one, but two clubs: Brighton, who signed the midfielder for a comparatively paltry £4.5m, and Independiente.
The Ecuadorian club kept 20 per cent of his training rights, and is set to receive an upwards of £20m on confirmation of his signing.
Michel Deller, the club's owner, told radio show La Red: 'We want to invest in a high-performance center in Santo Domingo, which will bear the name of Moisés Caicedo, that money is important, and it will be used for our boys'.
El Niño Moi
The youngest of ten siblings, Caicedo was - and remains - extremely close to his family.
When he first made the move to Independiente in the capital, he was reportedly wracked with homesicknesses, which some coaches thought might stymie his development.
One of his former youth coaches at Independiente, Miguel Angel Ramirez, told about an incident where Caicedo - who was particularly quiet and shy upon arrival at his first club - was unable to hid his emotions when denied the opportunity to see his family.
Caicedo has a particularly close relationship with his mother Carmen, and cherishes his roots in Santo Domingo's Mujures Trabadora neighbourhood
The player frequently hosts his family in the UK (pictured left) as well as visiting Ecuador often
'One day, in a period when he was injured, he requested permission to go home and celebrate his birthday,' Ramirez said