“I wanted to leave Liverpool the next morning. I wanted to go back home, end my contract, leave the city and leave the club because I could not forget what had happened.”
Those are the words of Pedro Chirivella while reflecting on an unforgettable afternoon in September 2019 when he feared his professional career was all but over.
Chirivella, now of Nantes, agreed to talk exclusively with the ECHO about the intricacies of his seven-year stay at Liverpool. By his own admission, it’s a journey that transformed the adolescent 16-year-old who had drawn comparisons to Xabi Alonso into the level-headed, composed senior figure who departed the club in the summer of 2020 after turning down a new long-term contract at Anfield.
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There is much to be desired about the 25-year-old’s outlook on life as he speaks frankly about the hardships that punctuated his time on Merseyside, culminating in a succession of unfortunate administration errors which left him questioning if a career in the professional game was worth the brutal exchange of his struggles.
But for all his difficulties, there’s one series of events that Chiriviella will never forget.
By the time September 2019 had come around, three and a half years had passed since the Spaniard had last pulled on a Liverpool shirt in a professional fixture, after enjoying successful loan spells with Go Ahead Eagles and Willem II in the Eredivisie.
Replacing Naby Keita for the final 27 minutes of the League Cup tie at MK Dons, Chirivella played out a run-of-the-mill cameo as goals from Ki-Jana Hoever and James Milner booked the Reds’ place in the fourth round of a competition they hadn’t won in seven years.
For Chirivella, his first appearance for the club since May 2016 should have signalled the start of his unlikely Anfield redemption, but instead, it was a night that embroiled Liverpool and the Spaniard in a tedious legal battle.
Immediately following the game it was uncovered that Anfield officials had not submitted the correct paperwork for Chirivella to gain international clearance, meaning he was in fact ineligible for the League Cup tie against the League One outfit. The Reds remained in the competition after accepting a £200,000 fine.
“I was going to Arsenal with the U23s,” he recalls, still clearly affected by the incident. “I had everything packed and then I got a phone call from Critch [Neil Critchley], who told me to go to his office. Critch and I always had a good relationship so when he told me: ‘Pedro, you can’t play tomorrow’, I thought he was joking. I laughed.
“He then went serious and called the lawyers from the academy, who told me that I couldn’t play and they didn’t know when I would be able to because there were papers [international clearance] missing. He said Liverpool were probably going to be kicked out of the League Cup because of it.
“I remember I went home, my father was there, and I started crying like a kid. I wanted to disappear from the city, go back to Valencia and forget Liverpool. The next morning everything came out in the press and on Sky Sports, it was very hard.”
For Chirivella, it was another administrative error that threatened to derail what had once promised to be a bright career on Merseyside. Having turned down a move to Norwegian side Rosenborg BK in the summer of 2018, after his brief but successful spell in Holland, he was demoted to the club's U23s team down at Kirkby and spent the first half of the 2018/19 season turning out for Neil Critchley’s side with the likes of Rhys Williams, Curtis Jones and Rhian Brewster.
With over 50 senior appearances to his name, Chirivella sought a move away from Liverpool during the 2019 January transfer window, but after a move to an unnamed Ligue 1 side fell through, and desperate to return to a first-team setting once again, the midfielder agreed to join Spanish second division Extremadura.
But in line with the strict formalities of the professional game, and given the late attempt by all parties to conclude the deal, the Segunda outfit missed the registration period for Chirivella, which meant he was unable to play at all for Extremadura. But for the duration of his five months at the club, he trained with his teammates in the western region of Spain - Monday to Friday - knowing there would be no reward for his efforts come Saturday afternoon.
At just 21 years of age, the fear that his career was vanishing right before his eyes was not hyperbolic.
“In January 2019, when I went to Extremadura and the papers didn’t go through [in time] I actually ended the season without playing professional football,” Chirivella recalls. “So when I came back to Liverpool in the summer, with one year left on my contract, it had been one year without playing and I knew it was going to be hard for me. I thought my chance to make a good career had gone, a year without professional football for someone who had not played much during his career was always going to be hard."
So when Chirivella unknowingly suffered a repeat of his fate later that year, when he turned out for Liverpool without valid clearance, his pent-up emotion was understandable and so was his desire to escape the spotlight that had been placed on him at Anfield.
“For me, it was the two hardest weeks of my professional career,” he says reflecting on the events of September 2019. “I came back after six months of having the same problem with my loan, so when I came to Liverpool and that happened in the first game I played in three years it was a nightmare.
“I received massive amounts of abuse because it was my name that was in the papers, it was Liverpool, but the first name was Chirivella. Obviously, it was really hard for me to go through those moments, I spent, I think, five weeks without playing, again.
"Imagine the last year of my contract, I had already spent a year without playing professional football and my first game back with Liverpool and this happens. I thought, ‘maybe this is it?’ I thought I’d have to go back to Spain and start my career in the lower leagues again.”
Forced to deal with an immense amount of misfortune during the fledgling stages of his professional journey, September 2019 felt like a far cry from the life Chirivella had enjoyed while growing up on the eastern coast of Spain.
Born in the city of Valencia, he grew up as a staunch fan of Los Che and idolised those who took to the sacred Mestalla turf during his childhood: David Villa, David Silva, Juan Mata and legendary figure Joaquin.
After joining his boyhood club at the age of five, his potential soon became clear as he rose through the ranks of Valencia and learned from the revolutionary teachings of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side and Spain’s back-to-back European Championship triumphs, in what was a golden era of Spanish football.
“When I was with Valencia and the Spanish national team you get told very early to play two-touch, quick passes and move,” he says. “I think that was because of the period the Spanish national team and [Pep] Guardiola were going through.
“The academy in Spain is a little more [focused] on working as a team, whereas in England, and France too, it’s more about the individual and how you improve the player. At that time we used to work tactically when I was six, seven, and eight years old - you had sessions where you would try to understand the game.
“It was a great period for me to be in Valencia and obviously, the national team at the time was unbelievable. I think it’s probably one of the best teams in football history - the way they played and the number of things they won. It was a great time for me to be around the young ages of the national team because I used to see them training, I used to be close to them in that way because a lot of the time we [the youth team] were in the same hotel, so it was great for me to be around all those players.”
At the age of 13, Chirivella’s increasing talent, which had been compared to legendary Spaniards Sergio Busquets and Alonso, had earned him an offer from Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy, but that was swiftly rejected by the Chirivella family after deciding he wasn’t ready to leave his hometown and make the significant jump to Catalonia.
Three years later, unknowingly to him, Liverpool had been in contact with his parents as they explored the possibility of bringing the midfielder to Merseyside. Chirivella would spend the final months of time at high school unaware of the interest and it was only after he had finished his school studies that his parents divulged the possibility of moving to England.
“They told me that they had been speaking with my agent for a month already but didn't tell me anything at that time because I was focused on my studies,” he says. “The year was ending and they thought the best thing for me was to focus on my studies. I felt loved by Liverpool and I felt like they had a path for me, that’s why I made the move.
“I think if you ask in Spain about the Spanish history that Liverpool have had with all the players and Rafa Benitez...if I had to choose one team in the Premier League, it would be Liverpool.
“When Liverpool came to me and I made the decision I was going to play in a team that Xabi Alonso, who is one of my idols, had played in, Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard was playing there, Luis Suarez. It’s massive players who play there and I thought if everything goes well I could be training with them in a couple of years, why not?"
Initially signing a scholarship upon completion of his move to Merseyside in 2013, Chirivella was handed his first professional contract as soon as he turned 17, which served as further confirmation of just how highly he was rated by then first-team manager Brendan Rodgers.
Despite making just one professional appearance under the Northern Irishman, the Spaniard credits his former manager with playing a huge role in his career as he helped him to settle into the hustle and bustle of Melwood.
“Personally, I got on really well with him and because he spoke Spanish he was asking me about my family, my brother and my personal life,” Chirivella says. “It’s something that doesn’t seem too important but for players who are not living in their own country, it’s really important to have someone that cares about how you’re doing and your life outside of football. For me, it was really easy to adapt to first-team training, it was good, I was looking forward to it every day.
“I remember I went there [Melwood] in 2014, I was only 17 but there were a lot of Spanish players around there at the time; Jose [Enrique], Alberto [Moreno] and even the Brazilian guys like Phillippe [Coutinho] took me under the wing. I felt really comfy up at Melwood. Brendan spoke perfect Spanish, and even though I had good English, it’s always good to speak with someone else in a foreign country in Spanish so that helped me too. I remember the first training session, I was nervy and against Steven [Gerrard] and Luis Suarez so for me it was a big day.
“The only player in my life where I was like, ‘wow, I’m training with him’, was Steven, for everything he accomplished at Liverpool and everything he was. I’ve never seen a right foot like his! The way he shoots, the passes he makes and how he ran at that age…he was still a machine, physically.”
Gerrard would end his 27-year affiliation at Liverpool in the summer of 2015 as he embarked on pastures new in Los Angeles. His swansong in red, though, would come in a humiliating 6-1 defeat to Stoke City on the final day of the 2014/15 campaign, which left Rodgers clinging on for his job ahead of the 2015/16 season.
Liverpool’s desperation to qualify for the following season’s Champions League saw Rodgers rotate during the early stages of the Reds’ Europa League campaign, which handed Chirivella the opportunity to make his professional debut in September 2015 in a 1-1 draw with Bordeaux.
The Spaniard had been on the cusp of the Reds’ first-team squad during the summer of 2015 and had featured heavily during the club’s tour of Southeast Asia and later impressed during the end-of-summer friendly against HJK Helsinki in Finland. But even after catching the eye with a fine 60-minute cameo alongside fellow academy graduate Jordan Rossiter in France, Chirivella would not feature for the Reds until the turn of the year following the sacking of Rodgers and the appointment of Jurgen Klopp.
“My first thought when Brendan left was, 'f**k', because he was the one who gave me my debut, but when the gaffer [Jurgen] was appointed I had something to prove. I was looking forward to seeing how the training would go and how he was so it was a couple of weeks of excitement."
And some four-and-a-half years after his Liverpool career commenced in the southwest of France, during a period stapled with difficulties, the end of the 2019/2020 season would allow Chirivella the opportunity to experience the heights his Anfield career had looked destined for.
After being hit with a £200,000 fine, half of which was suspended, for fielding Chirivella in the third-round win over MK Dons, Liverpool reached the quarter-finals stage of the competition and were forced to field a team of inexperienced academy players against Aston Villa.
That was because Klopp’s first team were scheduled to take part in the Club World Cup over in Qatar as Europe’s representative after winning the Champions League in June 2019. With those at English Football League unwilling to postpone the tie against Aston Villa, which was scheduled 24 hours before the clash against Mexican side Monterrey 4,000 miles away, Chirivella captained a youthful Reds side in the West Midlands.
The Spaniard was the oldest player in the squad that night, which was managed by U23s coach Critchley, as he lined up alongside a 16-year-old Harvey Elliott. And despite the overwhelming feeling of pride while captaining the club he had spent nearly a quarter of his life at, Chirivella couldn’t help but feel the sadness of being overlooked for a place in Klopp’s 23-man squad for the Qatar championships.
“Even if it was under such strange circumstances with all the players going to the Club World Cup it was a night where we made the academy proud, and we performed well,” he says. “It’s a night I will always remember.
“Of course, it was a proud moment, I was captaining the Liverpool first team in a cup game against Aston Villa. It was great, but, obviously, Curtis [Jones] and Rhian [Brewster] were with the first team and that’s where I wanted to be. It was a great night for me but it was probably not where I wanted to be at the age of 22, I was playing with some guys who were like 16 and 17.”
However, his final few months at the club would spring the ultimate surprise of his Liverpool career. His impressive performances during his limited first-team outings, and the glowing reviews he earned from those at the club’s academy, resulted in him lining up against Everton in the FA Cup.
It was a game he credits with kick-starting his career as he helped a heavily-rotated Liverpool side beat Carlo Ancelotti’s Blues 1-0 thanks to a stunning strike from his academy team-mate Jones.
“For me, if I had to choose a highlight moment during my time at Liverpool it would be that night,” Chirivella says while sporting a beaming grin. “I think it had everything; it was a derby, at home, we won and I played well. After so many low moments I had, it was a dream come true.
“I kind of knew that I was maybe ready to put in that kind of performance because I felt really good in training and I am someone who is really critical with myself, really honest and I knew probably in the years before I wasn’t ready for that kind of game. In my opinion, that year I was ready. I remember after it I had a lot of loan offers from teams in the Championship for six months, but I couldn’t go if I didn’t sign a new contract.”
His excellent display against Everton was quickly followed up by an outing against Shrewsbury Town in the next round of the FA Cup after Liverpool had been forced into a replay against the League One side. Klopp refused to cancel the first-team's winter break, which left Chirivella and his academy team-mates the opportunity to take centre stage at Anfield, in what would be his last appearance for the club.
Starring in midfield alongside Jake Cain and Leighton Clarkson, in what was the club's youngest-ever starting XI, Chirivella reflects on the night with great memories.
"I think the team we had at that time with Curtis, Harvey [Elliott], Neco [Williams], Sepp [van den Berg] and Ki-Jana [Hoever], we knew we could win that game even against senior players. When we saw a full Anfield, under the lights, a cup game, I think it was a great night for everyone,” Chirivella remembers.
“Thankfully the last three or four months at Liverpool changed a little bit of my memory that I thought I had from the time when I was struggling, the two last games I played Everton and Shrewsbury were for me a good way to finish my Liverpool career.”
Chirivella would depart Anfield later that year after turning down a new five-year contract with the club, in what he describes as a “risk” move as he embarked on a mission to settle down and find a team where he would be an important part of the side.
A move to the northwest of France, where he joined Ligue 1 outfit Nantes, seems to have given the Spaniard everything he craved and more since joining in June 2020.
Having spent so long restricted to Liverpool’s Kirkby academy playing in front of a few hundred spectators each Sunday afternoon, the 25-year-old is gearing up for his most exciting season yet after Nantes secured Europa League qualification thanks to their Coupe de France triumph at the Stade de France in May.
“For all the team, for me, it was the best moment of our lives,” he says recalling Les Canaris’ slender 1-0 triumph over OG Nice that sparked wild celebrations throughout the city. Yet he insists all of his success to date would not be possible without the trials and tribulations of his Anfield career.
“I’ve learnt so much from it," he says. "I became really mature and calm in difficult moments and it’s thanks to Liverpool, to the academy, and the people at Melwood. I wouldn’t change anything I went through.
“Enjoy this club, these players, thankfully now there have been five or six years where Liverpool has been one of the best teams in the world and we have to enjoy these moments because we never know in football how these things are going to go.
“These moments are priceless.”
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