The yellow cat eyes were the first giveaway. Carl Lewis first suspected Ben Johnson would cheat him out of gold at Seoul 1988 in a fleeting glance as they waited for the bang of the 100m pistol. The second clue came when the Canadian ran his race in 9.79 seconds. It was a world record fuelled by anabolic steroids. Much as we are discovering about Manchester City’s gluttony of success: if it looked too good to be true, it probably was.
Sport is littered with contested histories. If you squint closely at photos of Vincent Kompany wafting the Premier League trophy above his head, you can just make out the shape of Lance Armstrong sprawled on a chaise longue in front of seven sullied yellow jerseys. What was real, and what was a shameful lie? Every club will have reacted to the revelations about City’s alleged financial doping with the same incredulity and what-ifs.
For Tottenham Hotspur, the verdict – City guilty of all but one of 115 charges – comes at a moment when the pain is most acute. Bottom of the table, their days of flying within City’s orbit are gone. Four times Spurs missed out on the Champions League while finishing behind them. They lost a League Cup final.
But the impact is more profound than missing out on trophies, European places or prize money. At Tottenham, in particular, operating in the ecosystem Sheikh Mansour built has prompted introspection bordering on an existential crisis.
Mauricio Pochettino had a starting XI worth just £98m which twice challenged for the title. Because neither season ended with silverware, they were roundly ridiculed. Spurs were harangued and heckled and harried until that under that pressure, the purse strings finally burst. Having spent upwards of £300m, Roberto De Zerbi’s team are winless and facing up to the prospect of another relegation battle.
That is not to say Spurs can blame other clubs for their own mess. The market is skewed, the wages stratospheric and still current problems could have been avoided with smarter decisions. Nobody forced them to spend £60m on Tanguy Ndombele. It was not Sheikh Mansour who fired Pochettino, or veered aimlessly between Jose Mourinho, Nuno, Antonio Conte, Ange Postecoglou, Thomas Frank and for a fleeting moment, Igor Tudor. Daniel Levy and Vinai Venkatesham have made questionable appointments, sackings and signings of their own volition.
Yet if you tilt your head one way, Tottenham largely operated on an ethically sound, financially prudent model. And somehow, some way, they matched the oligarchs and oil barons and very nearly toppled them. Tilt to the other side and Levy never had the requisite ambition to turn Spurs into a super-club in their own right.
In 2017, when the then chairman oversaw a summer without a single signing, he made a visit to New York during which he was invited to ring the opening bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange in Times Square. He used that public appearance to deride the “unsustainable” spending of other teams and said he would always seek to run the club in a more “appropriate” way.
As the Premier League continued to eat itself, that in itself became unsustainable. In the five years leading up to this summer Spurs became one of the biggest spenders.
That is the double-edged nature of City’s rule-breaking. On the one hand, the extent of the damage is clear to the naked eye. At the same time, the sheer scale of it is impossible to measure. The identity crises sparked at clubs like Tottenham will never be written into any legal challenge, but they are as real as any financial compensation City’s rivals may seek.
There is an obvious irony, in that at surface level the relationship with City is stronger than ever. Tottenham hired Rafi Moersen from City Football Group as director of football operations, a move which helped deliver the signings of Omar Marmoush and Savio. Marmoush was such a good deal, in fact, that his price tag fortuitously saved City having to play Frankfurt a sell-on fee. Gone are the days when Manchester City managers feel they have license to dismiss Tottenham as “the Harry Kane team”.
Given what we know now, the shortcomings or otherwise of the Harry Kane team have to be cast in a whole new light. Lewis was only beaten by Johnson by a tenth of a second. City blew the competition out of the water.
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The last three weeks were about more than four Nations League games. Especially for Thomas Tuchel, this was a voyage of discovery.
The England coach started the international break in a bullish mood. Doubling down on criticism of the English DNA was a bold strategy, but Tuchel was not for turning. He intended to attack this nation’s biggest flaw head-on, his way.
Four games later and Tuchel has stayed true to his word. England will not attempt, as Tuchel insisted to a handful of journalists in a Wembley corporate box ahead of this Nations League mini-marathon, to be Spain. Control is not something, unlike the ability to mentally crumble at the final hurdle, that is entrenched in the English psyche.
In England, famous Anglophile Tuchel insisted, we like to embrace the chaos. Winning a match by grinding down opponents with attritional, possession-based football is not how we want to do things, he says.
The naysayers insist that replicating what Spain try to do to win key matches, with a squad arguably much less talented than Tuchel has at his disposal, is exactly what we need.
As the goals have flowed in the last few weeks, however, it is clear Tuchel is a man of his word. And to have a coach ready to stick to his beliefs, a footballing philosophy that has got him this far, is why England should keep faith less than two years before a home European Championships.
The goals flowed for England this international break (Photo: Getty)
For all Gareth Southgate’s achievements, there was no clear pathway to success, no underlying coaching principles that underpinned everything he did.
The most successful coaches in world football achieve unrivalled glory in their own unique ways. Luis de la Fuente’s Spain have mastered control. Jurgen Klopp will bring his heavy metal football to the Germany setup. Tuchel’s teams will continue to go for it, or the England coach will die on his hill.
The approach is yet to be perfected. England have never had any bother disposing of teams like Czech Republic and Croatia in qualification. The Spain defeat at Wembley showed that extra psychological edge, to kill off elite teams when they have them where they want them, remains elusive.
Acceptance that this is where the hardest work remains is at least at the forefront of Tuchel’s mind. The risk in playing an injured Alex Scott in midfield against Croatia was in part down to his acceptance that an England engine-room without Declan Rice gets through the transition quicker.
Scott is seen as a perfect foil for Elliot Anderson, and another key to unlocking further greatness in Jude Bellingham.
Brave calls are Tuchel’s calling card. But there is always an ulterior motive. He is trying to create something with England, and that should be applauded.
Tuchel’s disappointment in Cole Palmer is not down to the fact he has missed four matches. Tuchel places so much importance on the togetherness, or “brotherhood” as he calls it, in the camp, that he relished three weeks with the players to instil that missing mental edge.
Everyone at St George’s Park, from Tuchel’s assistants to chief football officer Dan Ashworth, is on board. Revolution is in the air in Burton upon Trent, as the England training base gets a much-needed revamp.
But it is not only the physical that will get a makeover in the next 18 months. Judging by the fact they were singing his name late into Tuesday night at Wembley, a large number of supporters are too.
England and Tuchel know exactly what they need to do to achieve football immortalisation in the summer of 2028. It is time we trusted him to get on with the job at hand.
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This is what they came for: to see England’s captain blow the bloody doors off, Harry Kane style.
Kane has none of Jude Bellingham’s “give me the ball, I can do it all” swagger. He does not preen like a peak Becks nor crave our attention like Gazza. He just keeps banging them in with that boy-next-door vibe. Our Harry, the understated king of everything.
What makes a hero, anyway? Achievement? Demeanour? Can skilled pillocks ever be cool? Do we choose our heroes or do they choose us? They have to be doing something extraordinary, for sure, and we have to be witness to it. Thereafter, we must give a damn.
How many new admirers did Kane attract at Wembley, where he pulled on an England shirt for the 125th time? Perhaps some in the crowd were seeing Kane for the first time: young, impressionable kids defying bedtime to lap up the significance of a number that framed the Nations League meeting against Czech Republic.
I was that little boy once, cheering like mad in front of a flickering television set when Alan Mullery (not a great) gave England the lead against West Germany in the World Cup quarter-final in 1970. Martin Peters (almost great) put England two up to send me charging about the room, at which point my dad said: “Don’t count yer chickens, lad.” He bloody knew, bless him.
Kane rises highest to head in England’s third goal at Wembley on Tuesday night (Photo: Getty)
Like most, I was there for Charlton, England’s global brand and arguably the greatest of them all (sorry, Harry). In the turbulence of troubled sleep, I’m probably still processing the disappointment of his substitution and the subsequent defeat it triggered.
At least he won the bloody thing four years prior. Kane is still waiting to ice the cake. The Nations League won’t do it. The Euros at Wembley two years hence might. For now, he’ll keep racking up the personal milestones in the service of the team.
As well as equalling Peter Shilton’s appearance record, Kane scored twice and hit the cross that led to the first — two goals and an assist. The churlish out there might quibble at the value of caps in the modern era, suggesting the greater number of games somehow lessens their value, making Shilton’s contribution over a longer period, 20 years, the more profound.
Moreover, were the cat-like Shilton not required to share duties with the excellent Ray Clemence, he would have been pushing 200 caps, a mark perhaps that would have been his for all time.
Being the all-round good guy he is, Kane would have been happy for Shilton to have remained peerless. Which is, of course, the very position he occupies in front of goal, the two he claimed in sealing a third successive England victory taking his tally to an unprecedented 91.
Kane is remarkable for the absence of an iridescent attribute. He does not have the mercurial swivel of Jimmy Greaves, the balance and movement of Charlton, the brute force of Nat Lofthouse, the grace of Glenn Hoddle nor the elegance of Bobby Moore.
What he does have is an unrivalled instinct for goal, an intuitive awareness of space and timing. And few have ever hit a ball as sweetly.
His first against the Czechs was a gorgeous demonstration of that, whipping it past the keeper on the half-volley. Oh, and he’s pretty decent in the air, climbing highest to nod England’s third, just as he did at the start of his journey 11 years ago against Lithuania.
It says much about his attitude and dedication that he is so well preserved, looking barely a year older than he did wheeling away in celebration in 2015. His understated authority is his star power, of course, and what makes him the commanding figure of this generation, the player in whom we and his team-mates are universally invested.
If you were to rank Kane in the list of England’s all-timers, it is perhaps enough to hand him the No 9 shirt ahead of those other net-busters Alan Shearer, Gary Lineker, Geoff Hurst, Lofthouse, Tommy Taylor and Stan Mortensen.
Take those twin pin-ups of 1966, Charlton and Moore, out of it, enhanced as they were by the ultimate glow-up of World Cup victory, and Kane has a shout to be THE man. Not that he would ever see it that way.
My all-time England XI: Gordon Banks, Kyle Walker, Bobby Moore, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Duncan Edwards, Jude Bellingham, Glenn Hoddle, Bobby Charlton, Harry Kane, Wayne Rooney
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The development of academy talent into first-team players is one of football’s biggest industries and the great unknown. In the second of a series embedded within Huddersfield Town, I try to explain how the process works in 11 steps…
Successful academy graduates are gold dust for every football club. In the Premier League they are the “pure profit” gamechangers but also the alternative to the rampant spending: Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Reece James, Kobbie Mainoo, Rio Ngumoha.
In the EFL, they can be more crucial still. One sale can secure the entire future of the club. Take Ollie Watkins at Exeter City – sold for £1.8m to Brentford, £4m on the sell-on clause when he moved to Aston Villa, further payment when he joined Al-Hilal this summer. With annual losses in the EFL rising all the time, creating a pathway for academy talent to shine is the best way to generate extra revenue.
The great complication: how do you blend the demand for success on the pitch in the present with the desire to develop young players in the team and have patience with their non-linear development?
In the second in my series behind the scenes at Huddersfield Town, I wanted to know how clubs wrestle with this conundrum, what processes they have in place for ensuring young talent is developed, assessed and retained and how different roles within a club work together to create pathways. I have broken it down into 11 principles…
Long-termism has to rule
Martin Drury was appointed head coach in May having served as assistant manager (Photo: Getty)
Huddersfield Town have not been quiet for a while at first-team level. Over the last decade they have been promoted to the Premier League, stayed there, been relegated, lost a play-off final, been relegated again and then twice missed out on the play-offs. There have been 12 different managers. It is a lot of change.
Change complicates pathways for young players, if you are not careful. Managers know they need to win now. Every season feels defining. Supporters are impatient. These are all potential barriers to academy players being given opportunities.
Sporting director Chris Markham says that the club have deliberately moved to address those concerns this summer. The club is more process than outcome-focused, which roughly translates as focusing more on the wider view and trusting in an identity and longer-term vision.
Jon Worthington is crucial to this. Worthington has done most jobs at Huddersfield Town – academy graduate, player, physio, academy coach, B team coach, interim manager. This summer his role as head of the academy was changed to director of player development.
It is a statement. Worthington now oversees the whole process, responsible for delivering on a longer-term vision that has pathways at its heart. He is the centre of the ecosystem for academy players: recruitment, development, assessment, retention. There is nobody on the planet better suited to the exact role and that is how you give yourself the best shot.
You need local buy-in
We all know how supporting a football club works. We are desperate for local players to get a chance in the first team because we love them the most. But then we also reserve the right to expect success and moan when players make mistakes and seasons go awry. It creates a difficult – maybe even impossible – balance for clubs and realistically includes some give and take: you hand out opportunities when you can.
One thing that absolutely helps is self-fulfillment. If your club has successfully developed academy players into first-team regulars or sold them on for significant financial gain, it creates emotional investment from supporters and extra appetite and patience for other young players coming through. There is a catch-22 element to that – someone has to be the first of a cohort to get a chance in the first place – but you take the point.
Huddersfield Town believe that they possess something that might help that mood: hyperlocalism. The manager was born in Huddersfield. The sporting director was born in Huddersfield. The chief operating officer was born in Huddersfield. The director of player development was born eight miles away, but they will not hold that against him. Football clubs seek USPs and this can be one.
‘Highest level’ is the mantra
The aim for everyone is to get players into the first team from the academy, for that first team to function highly and for those players to contribute in a way that makes them first choice because of how they perform, not who they are. Nobody is a charity case and nobody is advocating for overpromotion. That does not help.
However, there is a complicating factor that I had not thought of: what if your first team is not the highest level? That cannot be a reason for capping potential. Let Worthington explain:
“Our model is to get players to be successful in our first team, but ultimately we’re trying to produce players to play at the highest level, which is Championship and above. That’s what every player that comes into our programme should be aspiring to.
“The first team are not in the league that we want them to be in and so we’re not trying to aspire to produce League One players. We want to produce top players, but we want them to play in our first team first and that to be the springboard for them.”
The individual development plan
Academy graduate Jay Sway continues to impress since breaking into the first team (Photo: Getty)
Obvious thing to say: every academy member is different and so, if you are trying to maximise potential, no training and development plan should be the same either. Each player, from Under-16s up to the most senior member of the first team, has an individual development plan that changes regularly. The focus may be on strength, stamina, recovery, nutrition, leadership and more.
At younger age groups (where children are still in full-time education), this involves coaching evenings where coaches work on a one-to-one or one-to-two or three from Under-9s up to Under-16s. Players are carouselled, moving around to different activities focusing on different exercises, gym work, positional specifics or work with specialists that come in (a sprint coach, perhaps).
The intention is to curate everything around each individual as much as possible. By the time players are in the 16-21 phase, they have a process and environment that they have known from pre-academy upwards.
Monitoring and assessing
This is the most important bit, really, what Worthington labels as “a catalogue of meetings, discussions and end-of-cycle assessments” where players are presented. People across the age groups are informed of players who have been identified. Individual development plans can be changed to match needs.
Some players will be classed as “emerging talent players”, but the club makes the point that this is never set in stone. All academy players are on different journeys and develop at different speeds. It is not what they are now, it is what they are going to be and what they need within their development to get there.
There will usually be between two and four players in each age group who stand out (again, they can change). There will be specific meetings about those players where they work out when best to move players up or down age groups for matches.
That’s not as simple as playing the best two 17-year-olds in the Under-21s. You might drop a player down to focus on a certain skill in a match (eg a right winger taking on a left-back on the touchline or a central defender stepping out with the ball), or promote to face a certain standard of opponent. Workload management plays into the same discussions. You are trying to place individuals in scenarios that challenge them.
A trend must spread across the club
It might sound obvious, but the point of a long-term vision is that if the first team has a set identity then the rest of the club can be moulded in that vision and covers the coaching appointments, the delivery of the programme and recruitment.
“We coach concepts and duels which embrace one-on-one situations and out-of-possession actions – being able to take the ball off people and being aggressive in those moments,” Worthington says.
“We train like that from under-9s all the way through. There’s an intensity to the coaches and demands – in a positive way – of what we expect from the players. I think that aligns with a Yorkshire and Huddersfield Town football club ethos and what we’re trying to be.”
Use your ‘other’ matches wisely…
Chelsea’s Levi Colwill earned his stripes at the Accu Stadium before returning to Stamford Bridge (Photo: Getty)
With the pressure raised upon league fixtures, the other matches of an EFL season are usually the best chance to give opportunities and they will often provoke the most wider discussion between staff about selection.
“A number of our pre-season games were deliberately against really competitive teams, against men’s teams, when we included a lot of young players,” head coach Martin Drury says. “We’ve then had the cup games, where we’ve included a lot of young players and those players that have been involved with us have added real value to us.”
The EFL Trophy is an oft-criticised competition, but Drury is a huge fan for the same reason.
“I love the fact some Premier League clubs’ Under-21s teams enter it, it’s a great opportunity for every club to use it for different reasons. Some might be using it to get a win, some to get young players on the pitch, some to get players back from injury.”
…and take the wins when they come
During Town’s latest game in the EFL Trophy, Drury brought on 17-year-old academy forward Jamie Spencer for his first-team debut. Spencer’s first touch was to control the ball in the penalty area and his second touch was a goal. It doesn’t usually work like that so take those wins when they come and use them as poster boy moments for everyone in the academy.
“It was a top day for the collective staff,” Worthington says. “It takes you back to three years ago when we recruited 100 players over the summer and he was one of those players that we brought into that 9-16 team programme.
“But also, I think it helps in terms of buying in what we’re doing. He was identified as an emerging talent player very early on and I think the support and work of the staff around that have led to it. It’s just the start, but it was a nice moment.”
Managing the loan system
Within football’s hierarchical system, there is clearly scope for young players to drop down divisions to get experience. In fact, and slightly ironically, it has become one of the roadblocks for academy players in the EFL. Some clubs are preferring to loan from Premier League U21 and U18 squads rather than give existing academy players minutes.
Regularly, Worthington and Markham meet to discuss succession – when each player will be ready and what they need in terms of level, exposure and style of play. Evidently, those conversations start long before the transfer window opens. This is no exact science given any loan depends upon an external party.
This summer, Huddersfield sold Tom Iorpenda to Swansea City after a highly successful loan at Notts County because his contract was expiring in June 2027. That is a scenario the club are looking to avoid in future.
“Before they go on loan we need to be savvy with them,” Markham says. “We’re already talking to our under-16s now about their scholarship and their pro deals. The ones that the academy identify as being emerging talent players – we want to make sure that we have a specific pathway for them here and also that they have security as well.”
Don’t fear the poaching
One question I ask Worthington is around the poaching of talent. The Elite Player Performance Plan allows for Category 1 academies to recruit nationally, but even locally to Huddersfield Town there are five Premier League clubs within a 90 minute drive. Is the club not worried that you can do everything and then lose a player – for relatively low compensation – to a bigger club?
“I don’t worry about that because I believe in our programme,” he says. Maybe he’s simply ignoring what he ultimately can’t entirely control. Maybe he’s just being a company man. Or maybe he’s just right.
“I believe in the relationships that we’ve got with the players and parents. I believe that the parents see what we’re doing and ultimately they see there are pathways: seven seasons, 42 debuts, 50% of those players have gone on and played over 50 appearances within the league.
“That shows there’s a pathway for players and I think we’re really open with the parents in terms of what we’re trying to do and what that looks like. So I don’t think we can get concerned. We’ve just got to believe that we’ve got a really strong programme and players want to be here and feel that they’re progressing.”
This is the best way to end. You see a lot of negative headlines about football club academies and it is true that aftercare could always be better that some children at some clubs do suffer bad experiences.
But what I find most fascinating is how many tools football clubs have to offer support away from the physical or technical aspects of the game.
There are specific psychosocial exercises and sessions where academy players talk about openness, being open to feedback, self-regulation and managing emotions, dealing with disappointment, leadership values, motivation, drive, ownership of your journey with a multidisciplinary team around them (although there is always an onus on players to find their own way too).
A lot of the support is around experience and exposure, not just to certain scenarios but to success and failure. The first-team environment can be daunting and one of the great truths of elite sport is that competitors perform at their best when they are content and comfortable emotionally. Staff need to pick up on responses, even micro reactions.
That is what Worthington is most keen to reinforce and speaks most to parents about: the values being instilled will stand players well at Huddersfield Town or elsewhere, but also outside of football given that is the reality. You are hoping to find first-team players. But you are building people.
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WEMBLEY — It’s the nicest dilemma to have. One that perhaps acts as a reminder that this England team has so much more to give.
To most, Bukayo Saka is undroppable. A world-class wide forward with a decent goalscoring record for England should ordinarily be one of the first names on the team sheet. There just so happens to be a maverick-like alternative who offers Thomas Tuchel the thrill of the unknown more than the Arsenal firebrand ever could.
Now Morgan Rogers has his big move to Chelsea, we could be about to see his meteoric rise reach stratospheric levels. This is a player who revels in being a £100m player, inviting the pressure it brings.
Sitting down with him at England’s temporary training base in Enfield this week, Rogers insisted his goal is to be seen as one of the best players, not just in the Premier League, but the world. This is Cristiano Ronaldo levels of youthful ambition.
To be able to create goals like his mouthwatering assist for Harry Kane’s first goal in England’s most comfortable 3-0 victory over Czechia takes a certain type of visionary, a nonconformist. One capable of really reaching for the stars.
Kane scored on the night he equalled Peter Shilton’s cap record (Photo: Getty)
It was the perfect night for Rogers to try something so out of the ordinary. The Czechs were no match for England, who finished their Nations League mini-marathon on a high, Kane grabbing the headlines once more on a night he matched Peter Shilton’s all-time men’s appearance record for England.
The finish of the night came via a former West Ham boot, as Vladimir Coufal rifled an astonishing own goal into the net to open the scoring early on, a finish Kane could only dream of.
Then came the slickest goal in recent English living memory. Elliot Anderson’s first-time pass over the top landed right in Rogers’ stride. To be then able to slide a volleyed centre into Kane’s path, at that speed, defied logic.
Kane moved sixth in the all-time international goalscoring charts with his 91st England goal from a corner in the second half, as the hosts sauntered over the line to the most relaxing success.
Tuchel now has five weeks to ponder his next selections. Anthony Gordon has absolutely nailed down the left forward spot. He is as automatic a starter as Kane right now.
Having Saka and Rogers to fight for one spot is an embarrassment of riches for Tuchel. What the German has to consider is who has the best chance of helping England overcome that perennial conundrum that has haunted them for 60 years – how do they get over that final hurdle, when it really matters?
Well, the man who created England’s goal on that biggest stage against Argentina.
Rogers does not possess Saka’s experience, his winning mentality, or his goal return for England. What he provides, however, is a greater ability to pluck something out of nowhere. And it is in these moments where semi-finals or finals are decided.
There is also an argument to be made that another Arsenal figurehead, Declan Rice, could also be left out when Tuchel has all his tools available to him. Rice’s energy and leadership make him a pivotal player, but in his absence, the ball has moved much quicker through midfield and made England look much slicker than usual.
Leaving two Premier League winners and Champions League finalists out, on paper, seems somewhat churlish. Yet, when you have enigmatic talent like Rogers waiting in the wings, sometimes that element of surprise could be the difference between Tuchel becoming another nearly-man and an English footballing hero.
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Liverpool supporters could be forgiven for feeling a slight sense of foreboding when they inspected the team sheet ahead of Andoni Iraola’s first domestic cup match as head coach.
Not only were several key men given the night off against Tottenham Hotspur earlier this month, but amid 10 changes, the Basque boss selected three relatively recent youth-team graduates.
Trey Nyoni, James McConnell and Lewis Koumas had started just nine previous times between them, yet Iraola had no qualms throwing them in against Spurs’ lavishly assembled line-up.
It was a decision that speaks to Liverpool’s general direction under the former Bournemouth manager.
Iraola’s eagerness to embed younger players should not come as a surprise. It was a hallmark of his time at the Vitality Stadium, when Bournemouth signed Rayan, Eli Junior Kroupi, Milos Kerkez, Alex Scott and Dean Huijsen, all of whom were trusted as teenagers to hold down a regular first-team spot.
Iraola has a track record of trusting in young stars, like Liverpool winger Lewis Koumas (Photo: Getty)
That, in part, convinced Liverpool of Iraola’s suitability to replace Arne Slot. He aligned with a long-held view that academy graduates can form a staple part of the Reds’ squad and supplement the team’s world-class talent.
Plans to build a state-of-the-art indoor dome pitch at their Kirkby base speak to the importance placed on a youth-team pathway, a strategy synchronized through executive level and the first team.
Jurgen Klopp’s youthful Carabao Cup final-winning roster in 2024 – which included Nyoni, McConnell and Koumas – is testament to that. But under Slot, youth-team graduates were afforded fewer chances, a fact that sat uneasily with many supporters, as did the sales of talented protegees Jarell Quansah, Tyler Morton and Ben Gannon-Doak.
Admittedly, that can be seen as a sign of success for the academy. With Liverpool’s recent penchant for signing £100m+ players, there is only so much headroom for underage progression. Even still, it has not gone unnoticed how Nyoni has already made three Premier League appearances this season, half of his total from last term.
Iraola’s approach differs from his predecessor’s. While Liverpool insiders would reject the notion the 44-year-old represents a radical shift, he actively seeks to incorporate the club’s talented youth-team starlets.
During his first official club interview, Iraola referenced the need to observe the Under-21s personally ahead of the summer tour to the US. He later labelled the performances of the young players as the biggest positive from pre-season.
“I think we will need them during the season,” Iraola said. “They’ve shown me that they have the level, they can give us quality minutes, a good level in training and I’m sure some of them will stay with us.”
Full-club alignment
Liverpool midfielder James McConnell was given the nod in the Carabao Cup win over Tottenham (Photo: AFP)
Relying on a cohort of youngsters – which also includes Luke Chambers and Jayden Danns, who have been named on the bench this season – has another advantage. It allowed Liverpool to funnel their financial resources into signing fewer, higher-quality signings, and gave greater latitude for squad cost ratio calculations.
Likewise, as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur looked to add depth at left-back, Liverpool opted to retain the previously redundant Kostas Tsimikas as back-up, alongside Chambers.
It is a policy that is not universally popular. There has been criticism that Liverpool didn’t sign a direct replacement for Mohamed Salah. Again, the club’s strategy was more convoluted.
Few expected Koumas to play a significant role on the back of a campaign where he was named a Championship substitute 31 times. Yet after just one week of pre-season, Iraola had seen enough to be convinced of the Welshman’s credentials. Any prospect of a summer exit was quashed. It allowed Liverpool to instead prioritise the signing of another elite attacker: Bradley Barcola.
And despite the competition for places, Koumas has featured in five of the Reds’ seven games this season. That the 21-year-old has played over so many senior matches during his fledgling career helped solidify the view that he is now “first-team ready”.
His performances have also vindicated Iraola’s summer assessment, with Koumas earning praise for his “contagious” work rate. Sources speak of a tenacious youngster who is determined to forge a career at Anfield, but also willing to show patience.
Crucially, as for any juvenile talent, the winger grasped the chance at club level when it was presented. The same can be said of Nyoni and McConnell, with all three praised internally at Liverpool for their commitment, versatility and how comfortable they look in the first-team environment.
It is why abundant Championship loan interest in McConnell was never considered, while Nottingham Forest’s advances for Nyoni were rejected. There is a belief the trio are Premier League-ready if an injury crisis were to strike.
That results at academy level have generally improved over the last year should also not be overlooked, all while the club ambitiously scour the globe for the top young talent.
The ultimate appraisal will always come on the pitch, of course. In that sense, Liverpool’s policy has been justified.
Fans needn’t have worried against Spurs after all – Nyoni and McConnell impressed in midfield, Koumas was man of the match, and the Reds ran out 3-1 winners.
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“I read about me that ‘he was the best player who never made it’. I’m devastated to this day for myself and for Evertonians. It’s taken all these years to build the courage to tell people what I could have been.”
These poignant words, delivered in the strongest Scouse, come from one of the great lost talents of English football, Billy Kenny.
He goes on: “I’ve been bitter, I’ve been angry. For 25 years I didn’t have one good day. I had suicidal thoughts, rehabs, jail. You couldn’t write it … but I did, I wrote it.”
We are in The Slaughterhouse pub in Liverpool city centre. On the wall outside, a poster advertises an upcoming event with the man currently sitting inside, speaking to The i Paper.
Billed as “The Goodison Gazza”, it will promote the memoir of the same name that Kenny has written with TheGuardian journalist Jamie Fahey – a moniker inspired by the similarities that Peter Beardsley, then an Everton teammate, once saw between him and Paul Gascoigne, another troubled soul.
The book begins with Kenny’s finest hour in football, 7 December 1992. It was his Merseyside derby debut and the 19-year-old midfielder excelled in a 2-1 win over the Liverpool team he had grown up hating, but who – as the book reveals – wanted to sign him so much that he travelled down with their squad to the 1988 FA Cup final as a guest of manager Kenny Dalglish.
‘My dream was to beat Liverpool’
After that derby victory, he was led to Goodison Park’s boardroom to sign a new contract. Hours later, however, he took his first line of cocaine.
“My dream was to beat Liverpool in the Merseyside derby. When I’d done it, I let my guard down.”
Cue a downward spiral that led to Everton sacking him after just 23 appearances, one England Under-21 cap and two months of rehab in the Priory.
His football career thereafter comprised just six more games – four for Oldham Athletic, two for Barrow. And the descent was just beginning.
“I could never get over what happened, lad,” he reflects. “It led me to addiction for 25 years.”
‘The best player I’ve ever been on a pitch with…’
‘I used to kick Ryan Giggs,’ Kenny says. ‘He was like a gazelle’ (Photo: Getty)
Kenny had attended the same secondary school, Campion High School, as Steve McManaman, a boyhood blue who did join Liverpool.
A more intriguing juxtaposition is with Ryan Giggs, his main rival in matches between Liverpool and Salford Schoolboys.
“The two of us would get man of the match. Giggs was on the left, I was on the right so we marked each other.
“If you asked Ryan today who’s the toughest lad, he’d say ‘Billy’ because I used to kick f*** out of him and he’d just get himself up and dust himself down.
“He’s the best player I’ve ever been on a pitch with. He was like a gazelle.”
Like father, like son
As with Liverpool, Kenny rejected the overtures of Giggs’ Manchester United, despite a summer training with them. “If I’d gone to Man United, who knows,” he wonders.
Instead, he followed the trail of his father, Billy Kenny Sr, who played briefly for Everton in the early 70s.
How good was he? Fahey, who played against Kenny as a schoolboy, remembers his “peculiarly advanced game sense and desire”.
Kenny himself notes “my vision was better than most midfielders as a young kid”.
As a boy, he had obsessively practised keepy-ups around the tenement block in which he lived.
Everton’s ‘birds and booze’ culture
Former manager Howard Foster enjoyed a drink during his time at Goodison Park (Photo: Getty)
Yet as his girlfriend, Charlotte, observes during our chat, his addictive personality proved his downfall in an Everton first-team environment marked by its “birds and booze” culture.
Howard Kendall’s alcoholism is an awkward subject on Merseyside, given the reverence in which Evertonians hold their most successful manager.
Yet this was not the glorious mid-80s, but his stuttering second spell in charge.
“Howard liked all his players to have a drink,” Kenny relates.
“On the team coach he’d be sitting there with his legs on the table, in a pair of budgie smugglers, no top on.
“He’d go to me, ‘Billy, come here. Sit down, lad. Get a glass of this Chablis and I’d be arseholed by the time I got off the coach.”
Kenny does not hide his own failings, saying: “It was a mixture of a lot of things, both out of my control and in my control”.
Burying his head in the sand
While he recalls “no help” from his then agent, there were good people whose advice he ignored, including coaches Colin Harvey and Paul Power, who, during Kenny’s stay at the Priory, took turns to visit him for daily training.
By then, though, it was too late. Pat Nevin, a former Everton teammate, has sympathy.
“I feel a wee bit like it was almost inevitable because of his personality and the culture at the time,” he says.
Kenny’s memoir ‘The Goodison Gazza’ is available to preorder online
Today, the words pour out of Kenny.
“I’ve been angry but I feel like it’s seeping out of me,” says the 53-year-old, whose cocaine addiction ended on the day of his mother Bella’s funeral 15 years ago.
And with the telling of his story, he hopes to reach a stage where he can offer advice to young footballers.
“I just want to help people now and be the best person I can be,” he adds.
Three pieces of advice for young players
Kenny quotes Michael Branch – another Everton youngster of the 90s who ended up in prison – who told him that at their old club now “there’s 17 people you can go and speak to with your problems”.
The view of a pair of industry insiders, though, is that players can be wary of seeking help from their clubs – and the struggles of those in the modern day show how they can still lose their way.
Kenny’s book ends with three pieces of advice to today’s players, starting with the need to avoid drink and drugs.
He continues: “Have your own agenda. Listen to your parents and immediate family as they’re the only one with your best interests at heart.
“I used to go out with five of my mates but I’d be at the bar with 50 lads. I only knew five of them. I can count my mates now on one hand.
“My circle is tiny. I stay away from dangerous people, dangerous places and dangerous things. I’ve got a good girl behind me. I’ve got new mates around me now and I’m grateful, lad.
“I should have been dead years ago. I’ve had heart attacks. I’ve overdosed. If I wake up tomorrow happy, I’m winning.”
“The Goodison Gazza” is published by Reach on 8 October
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