Liverpool are all about gaining an edge where others can't. The introduction of new rules around signing youth players following the United Kingdom leaving the EU could have been seen as a major blow for Premier League clubs, but the Reds have used it to their advantage.
Upon the completion of Brexit, laws have restricted clubs in England from signing overseas players before they turn 18 - the Merseysider’s final addition outside of these guidelines being Stefan Bajcetic, arriving from Celta Vigo on New Year’s Eve, 2020, the day before Brexit became official.
Bajcetic has made swift progress in the three years since then, joining as a centre-back but quickly transitioning into a defensive midfielder who has made the step up from academy to first team seamlessly; still only 19, he stands to be a key player for Jurgen Klopp in years to come.
But he very much represents an anomaly in Liverpool’s recruitment of foreign youngsters pre-Brexit, with many of the more high-profile signings from overseas ultimately failing to make the grade.
Ki-Jana Hoever, Yasser Larouci and Dal Varesanovic are among those to have been brought in before struggling to establish themselves and moving on, while Mateusz Musialowski, Billy Koumetio, Vitezslav Jaros and Jakub Ojrzynski remain on the books but are highly unlikely to break through.
While it has worked for some, with Bajcetic potentially joined by Brazilian goalkeeper Marcelo Pitaluga as a full-time first-team player in the future, there are many more cases of a scattergun approach to signing youngsters from abroad not paying off.
Whether that is down to less due diligence conducted with limited access to each player’s background, or simply that the transition from clubs like Le Havre, SMS Lodz and FK Sarajevo is more difficult than hoped, is unclear.
However, the enforcement of a new stance for those in the youth quarters at Liverpool’s AXA Training Centre is providing the club with a new crop of talent with genuine first-team hopes.
Rather than scour France, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and beyond, utilising connections with coaches and agents to identify the next generation, Brexit has forced the Reds to instead target the very best of those within the UK.
Calum Scanlon, the 18-year-old left-back who made his first-team debut against Toulouse in the Europa League, was technically the first such arrival, joining from Birmingham in a £500,000 deal at the same time as Bajcetic.
Then came Kaide Gordon, signed from Derby in a deal worth up to £3 million; after that it was Bobby Clark, the versatile attacking midfielder whose £1.5 million switch from Newcastle was balanced out by Ethan Ennis joining Manchester United for the same fee.
Next was Ben Doak, snapped up from Celtic for a nominal fee; and then Trent Kone-Doherty who, though plying his trade in the League of Ireland and therefore playing within the EU, was available as he represented Northern Irish club Derry City.
Gordon, Clark and Doak have already stepped up to the senior squad, with the latter a firm fixture this season and the former pair involved but limited due to untimely injuries. Kone-Doherty, meanwhile, has already trained with the first team on a number of occasions and, at 17, is key for the under-21s.
The summer just gone brought two more exciting additions, with centre-back Amara Nallo and midfielder Trey Nyoni arriving from West Ham and Leicester respectively.
While - like Gordon, Doak and Clark before them - their clubs had hoped they would stay and commit for the long term, both Nallo and Nyoni were lured by the offers on the table at Anfield, which is the result of eight years of rebuilding under Klopp and academy director Alex Inglethorpe.
Inglethorpe, appointed in his current role in 2014, has revamped the entire academy structure at Liverpool, with a new emphasis on quality over quantity, while Klopp has proved that, under his management, there are genuine opportunities for youngsters to break through into the first team.
Despite widespread interest from almost every top club across the Premier League, Nallo and Nyoni both resolved to join Liverpool - with 14-year-old Harvey Owen also making the move from Wolves in a package worth up to £400,000 - and their decision has already been vindicated as they are fast-tracked through the ranks.
Nallo, who just turned 17 this November, is already a regular starter in Barry Lewtas’ under-21s, forming a promising partnership with another youngster playing two levels above his age group, 16-year-old local boy Carter Pinnington.
“Listen, he is just 16, and I don’t think we’ve ever asked a lad that young to play at centre-back against senior opposition,” Lewtas said in a recent interview with LiverpoolFC.com. “He should be really proud of his performance. I think the main thing for Amara is he played ever so well but he didn’t let any kind of mistakes or momentum shifts in the game affect him. So he didn’t play like a 16-year-old, that’s for sure.”
And for Nyoni, who himself only turned 16 in June, the rise has been even swifter, with the prolific, versatile midfielder making such an impact with the under-18s that he was called into first-team training and then made the matchday squad for the 3-0 win over Brentford in the Premier League.
If Nyoni had been brought on that day, he would have broken Jack Robinson’s long-held record as Liverpool’s youngest-ever Premier League player, and would have been behind only Jerome Sinclair as the club’s youngest debutant in all competitions. Instead, he was left to soak in the experience from the bench and savour a post-match bear hug from Klopp, describing it a “day to never forget."
A proper debut for the England under-17 international may not be far off, with there high hopes that he follows the path laid out by Gordon and later Doak as an almost immediate addition to the first team.
Nallo and Pinnington perhaps best encapsulate this new recruitment drive, however: one high-potential signing from a Premier League rival, one long-term project from the club’s own catchment area, giving genuine food for thought as Klopp and his staff plot for the future.
The best of the rest, developing alongside an eye-opening generation of talent from Merseyside and the surrounding areas. For every Doak from Glasgow, there should be a Jarell Quansah from Warrington; for every Clark from Epsom, a Lewis Koumas from Chester; for every Gordon from Derby, there should be a Scouser like Jayden Danns - all of which would eventually fill the club’s homegrown quota in the Premier League and in Europe.
It wasn’t exactly what was falsely promised on the side of that bus back in 2016 - but it is surely one of the only true, albeit protracted, benefits of Brexit in Liverpool.
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