BRADLEY: THE BOY DONE GOOD
How fitting that Liverpool’s new kid on the block was the star of the show in midweek demolition job on Chelsea — his last game before his dad passed away yesterday
JURGEN KLOPP was enjoying some much-needed rest and relaxation in Dubai during the recent winter break when he was approached by a bloke in a flowery shirt. It was a Bolton fan begging the Liverpool manager to allow Conor Bradley back on loan to the League One side.
‘Too late,’ came the response from Klopp, sporting a ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ cap which he made a point of putting on to wind up a Manchester United fan asking for a photo. And ‘too late’ was the gist of most responses to clubs who came knocking for Bradley in the summer, too.
Bradley is the name on everyone’s lips after his starring performance against Chelsea on Wednesday, where he scored one and assisted two more. How poignant that this match was the last one his dad, Joe, was to see, after the tragic news he had passed away yesterday following a lengthy illness.
It casts a sombre and heartbreaking note over what has been a fairytale month for the young full-back. Anyone who knows Bradley well has cited his family as playing a pivotal part in his development. It is now likely up to the player whether he travels to Arsenal or not.
After scoring five goals and notching up five assists from right-back at the thirdtier club, Klopp and his coaching staff had seen enough to conclude that Bradley was to play a pivotal role in this new iteration of the Reds’ team which the German manager dubbed ‘Liverpool 2.0’.
Bradley was singled out for praise in a pre-season camp in Bavaria with pleasing performances against Karlsruher and Greuther Furth — but that was the last sight of him until the turn of the year, with the 20-year-old missing more than four months with a back injury.
Now he is the talk of the Liverpool fanbase and beyond, not just those in the Kop who chanted his name multiple times in a man-of-the-match performance against Chelsea on Wednesday night.
That was his fifth start in a row for the Reds and there was a genuine debate over whether he should keep the shirt for today’s season-defining trip to Arsenal ahead of Trent Alexander-Arnold. The fact that was even a debate is testament to Bradley’s abilities.
His rise has been nothing short of meteoric. But how did he get from a young lad playing on park pitches in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland to the man who is turning out star performances in the best league in the world?
No one is better placed to chart his rise than Joe McAree, a legend of the Northern Irish football scene now in his late 70s. ‘I actually was the man who was told about him first of all by a referee who came from Conor’s hometown of Castlederg,’ McAree tells Mail Sport.
‘He told me he’s the best kid he’s ever seen and we should get him down to our youth set-up at Dungannon. He was eight years old so I laughed and, well... the road from Castlederg to Dungannon is an awful drive — like a snake’s pass.
‘I said I’m not gonna take an eightyear-old and drive him up and down that road three times a week, but thought I would keep an eye out for him. About three years later one of my coaches asked me to go to a wee final in Omagh one night — it was St Patrick’s against another team.
‘He said, “There’s this wee boy called Bradley playing, he’s playing two or three years above his age group”. I laughed. So I drove to Omagh, watched the final. Conor was playing centre forward — two feet shorter than everybody else and two or three years younger.
‘I spotted his parents and, after the game, introduced myself and invited him down to Dungannon.
He said, “We’ll have a think about it and come back to you”.’
Bradley rejected the approach but realised he’d made the wrong decision a few months later. Fastforward a few years, Dungannon Swifts got a call from Liverpool, who sent two scouts over to check out the facilities at the club.
He spent time going back and forth to Merseyside and seasoned academy observers say he is a
If he plays in the Gerrard role, he will be even better
down-to-earth, quiet lad but a studious professional. ‘Conor and I have been mates the whole way through,’ Tyler Morton, a Liverpool loanee at Hull City, tells Mail Sport.
‘He has turned into a real top player. Everyone at the academy knew he would. Jarell (Quansah) as well, he’s been absolutely brilliant. It’s lovely to see them do well at the club that I love and support.’
Bradley and Quansah have been huge beneficiaries of the loan market, with the latter spending half of last season at Bristol Rovers, also in League One, and now featuring in 17 first-team matches this term.
One of the themes of Klopp’s reign has been how he always looks at the academy for solutions rather than asking the owners to open the chequebook. The other day, he cited how assistant coaches Pep Lijnders and Vitor Matos had been ‘in his ear’ for years to promote Bradley.
Nearly everyone asked to talk about him will use the same words or phrases to describe Bradley: humble, talented and driven. Mum Linda is undoubtedly a big influence: she has acted as an unofficial agent for her son since his early days in football.
Dad Joe was also present during his football upbringing and the only heartwarming thought after his tragic passing yesterday is that he died knowing his son had ‘made it’ and will go on to live out his dreams at Liverpool.
‘The people at Liverpool know a lot more about football than me,’ adds McAree. ‘But I will say this: whenever someone decides to put him in the Steven Gerrard role, you’ll have an even better player…
‘He’s a talented boy, with a great attitude. From the first day I met him in the cafe, he looked me in the eye and smiled, it just felt different. For an 11-year-old boy it was just different, the focus he had.
‘This boy can get from box to box like a reindeer, tremendous stamina, he can thread passes into places that you wouldn’t know were there. It’s a fairytale. I’m waiting patiently for him to move to midfield and be the next Gerrard.’