Ben Doak was one of several young stars to catch Jurgen Klopp’s eye in Liverpool’s friendly win over AC Milan.
Darwin Nunez, Mohamed Salah and Thiago Alcantara were on target in the 4-1 win to round off their preparations for the return of competitive football.
Reds boss Klopp told the club website: “When you bring on the kids [in the] second half and you see the pass from Bobby Clark and the whole performance from Stefan [Bajcetic], the performance from Mel [Frauendorf] as a right full-back and then Ben Doak comes on, 16 years old, and is this kind of natural force, it's really cool to see.
“In these 10, 11 days, the kids especially, everybody made a real step forward.
“That's why these things are so important, that we can involve them. And in general, tonight was the result of the last 10 days what we saw in training and tonight we could bring it on the pitch, which is obviously nice.”
Doak was introduced in the 83rd minute and immediately set up Nunez’s second goal, the 17-year-old showing why he is so highly rated by Liverpool.
Klopp continued: “When you see these boys and performing in a game like this, it's cool. It's a real physical game, adult football is a physical game and the boys need to make these steps [so] they can get ready for it step by step.
“How I said, the physical part will come but until you are that strong, you can create a lot of ideas, you can do things a bit smarter.”
