Liverpool academy manager Alex Inglethorpe has expressed his worries surrounding pressure of players coming through the ranks at the AXA Training Centre in Kirkby.
The 51-year-old also detailed the mentality from the club surrounding players on the fringes of breaking into the first-team driving expensive cars, expressing the need to "earn it". Liverpool's academy is widely regarded as one of the best in the country and throughout the years has nurtured the rise of Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and more recently, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones.
With access provided by football clubs and individual social media platforms, fans can catch a glimpse of the next star to walk out at Anfield throughout their time with the U18s and U21s. But with their quality also comes responsibility, Inglethorpe reiterates on the We Are Liverpool podcast.
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"There's a balance, so what we now do is that the players sign up to a car clause, you don't want them driving in with a Range Rover. The reason you don't want them driving in with something which is too big, too grand, too much of a statement is because it's not just the manager and staff that might have an opinion on you but it's the senior players," he said.
"I'm not sure that James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Andy Robertson, the first cars they drove there would've been an element of humility and I use it in a presentation with the boys.
"You can't go into a race you're never going to win, I don't mean with the car, I mean with life, you can't think 'I am a first-team player because I have a better car'.
"We could afford to pay them more but we don't because I don't think that would be right, there's something around deferred gratification than instant, you should earn it a little bit and the players know if we don't approve of their car, they can park it in the David Lloyd [Gym] car park but it won't be in the Academy," Inglethorpe warned.
"I don't want to be an idiot about it but I don't want them to work 10 years for an audition and fail it before they've even set foot on the pitches. I want them to be safe, there are plenty of choices around safety [with cars], you're a young player in charge of two tonnes of metal, you've got to make sure that you take care of that responsibility.
"I just think it's important, there is a little bit more about image with Instagram or TikTok or how many followers you've got, it's very easy for a young child to get wrapped up in the image of how you look or trying to keep up with a lifestyle that you have to and it's a race you can't win," he added on social media and footballers. "There's got to be an inner-confidence about how you are and I worry sometimes about the pressures of a young person now where their life is 'Instagram perfect'."
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