[ad_1]
The empty stands may make it look like the tournament could take place anywhere these days, but you can be sure that Tranmere’s Prenton Park won’t host a Champions League game any time soon.
However, it played host to some Champions League players in the not-too-distant past.
In fact, three years ago this week, a Liverpool youth team with defender Rhys Williams and midfielder Curtis Jones lined up there in a UEFA Youth League match against the Maribor Slovenes, with Jones, an arrogant midfielder with hair that stood out and an attitude from Scouse that did too – he opened the scoring in a 3-0 win.
On the bench was the figure that is still synonymous with Liverpool in the Champions League.
Steven Gerrard watched as his Liverpool youth team, the first group he had coached at any level, played a smooth victory that would later be replicated by Jurgen Klopp’s first team later that day.
(Image: Liverpool Echo)
That now, three years later, Williams and Jones are part of that first team owes a little to the former captain of the club, a little to Klopp and a lot to two players who grow in height with each passing week.
It was Jones who was best known before last month, of course, with a hit from the edge of the box against Everton in a televised FA Cup third-round game that will probably do it for you.
Though still on the sidelines of pre-lockdown stuff last season, the midfielder has now settled firmly into Klopp’s first-team plans, so much so that he has started three of the last five games in all competitions to little surprise.
It was excellent in Atalanta.
(Image: PA Images)
Jones, wearing the old Gerrard No. 17 jersey he wore in 2001, always wanted the ball and often demanded it from teammates with a reputation far greater than his own.
One of the wonders of the teenager is that, in his head, no one has a greater reputation than him. It’s what makes it so exciting.
Williams, he suspects, thinks quite differently than that, and the center-back still surely feels like he’s experiencing some kind of reality show where he goes from a loan stint at Kidderminster Harriers to the Champions League in just a few. months.
He would have gone to Atalanta’s game perhaps hoping he didn’t have much to do, and although he didn’t, everything that was required of him was done with a minimum of fuss.
It’s easy to see why the club believes Williams has a higher ceiling than Nat Phillips, the sturdy 23-year-old who started the win over West Ham but is ineligible for the Champions League because the Reds thought he would be. leave the club before they had to register their squad.
(Image: Getty Images)
We would not be talking about either of the two defenders if it weren’t for what happened to Virgil van Dijk, of course, but in injury comes the opportunity, and the same can be said of Jones, who bets on the absences of Thiago Alcantara and Naby Keita, although the latter returned here.
One of the most salient things Klopp said when he signed his new contract until 2024 last December was that he couldn’t wait to mold his next big Liverpool team, his Reds 2.0.
Williams and Jones, two players born the same week in early 2001, and led by a man who was at the center of the action nearly two decades ago, could well end up playing a big role in that future.
However, they also have a role to play in the present, and more opportunities will present themselves.
Sign up for the Mirror Football email here for the latest news and transfer gossip.
[ad_2]
