Liverpool’s local identity is at risk after Curtis Jones exit
Liverpool’s marketing department once coined a phrase that split opinion among fans.
Depending on which side of the fence Liverpool supporters sat, ‘This Means More’ was either an anglicised take on Barcelona’s ‘Mes Que Un Club’ – “more than a club” – ethos or a cheap strapline to hook in potential customers yearning for a sense of belonging. But for Jurgen Klopp, something really did mean more during his time at Anfield.
As his already depleted charges clung on for dear life against Chelsea’s financial juggernaut in the 2024 Carabao Cup final, the German went for broke. He flooded the Reds’ line-up with players forged almost exclusively in the developmental wing of the club’s AXA Training Centre.
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Jarell Quansah, Jayden Danns, James McConnell, Trey Nyoni and Bobby Clark led a charge which culminated in Virgil van Dijk’s extra-time winner. Klopp described it as ‘easily the most special trophy I ever won’; no mean feat considering he already counted a Champions League on an impressive honour roll.
Alan Hansen’s infamous edict that ‘you can’t win anything with kids’ was disproved by his former club as a team of callow youth held their own against one that Gary Neville dubbed ‘blue billion-pound bottle jobs’ and offered a glimmer of hope that the tide could be stemmed, if only slightly. Fast-forward two years since that Wembley triumph and the club’s homegrown core is now facing a genuine existential threat.
Klopp previously spoke of his dream that the Reds could, potentially in the next decade, field ‘a team full of Scousers’ because they would ‘fight like crazy’. Ironically, the player who commanded that soundbite, in July 2020, has delivered a hammer blow to his utopian vision.
Curtis Jones’s departure to Inter Milan is set to mark the end of an era for the club’s local heartbeat. In each of the past 33 seasons, a homegrown player has made at least one Premier League appearance for their boyhood heroes; a lineage that can also be traced back to the beginning of their 134-year history, with Philip Kelly becoming the first in a long list of what Kopites would later vaunt as ‘a Scouser in our team’. The Toxteth-born midfielder’s Serie A move, a year before his existing contract had been due to expire, risks changing all that.
Little over 12 months since Trent Alexander-Arnold walked away from the club that helped make him one of the world’s finest full-backs, Anfield chiefs were determined to avoid history repeating itself. The finders’ fee which Inter paid, in the region of £30m, is small change in relation to what will be lost by Jones pursuing more regular opportunities away from his roots.
Liverpool’s academy has long been a source of both pride and intrigue. Under the tutelage of Steve Heighway, a fabled winger in the club’s 1970s dominance period, numerous Scousers rose through the ranks to become household names. From Steve McManaman and Robbie Fowler to Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard, local lads routinely came good on Merseyside at a time when only Manchester United’s Class of 92 had a more prolific output among established Premier League clubs. At a time when local match-goers were already finding their place at Anfield pushed to the margins by increasing ticket costs, they continued to represent the last authentic link between the stands and the pitch.
They also doubled as a reference point for incoming players getting to grips with the unique culture that still exists around the club.
For a time, however, that trail ran cold. Four sides in the club’s history have won the FA Youth Cup but the move from formative to first team proved a difficult gap to bridge for those who followed in Carragher’s footsteps. Gerrard’s breakthrough in the immediate afterglow of the 1996 win over a West Ham squad containing fellow future stars Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand proved to be the last to make the grade as a regular figure in the senior setup.
Those capable of stepping up also found themselves caught in the crossfire as a pitched battle between the Kirkby centre of excellence and the Anfield dugout, where Gerard Houllier and Rafael Benitez both attempted to wrest control of the youth policy, raged. Attempts to redress the imbalance by enlisting former Barca youth coaches Rodolfo Borrell and Pep Segura, who played key roles in Lionel Messi’s rise, to oversee development had little effect on reversing what was already lasting damage. Local players that did go on to make semi-regular outings in that period ultimately played second fiddle to a talent pool which had drawn from far beyond the River Mersey’s enclave, most notably Raheem Sterling.
Through it all, Carragher and Gerrard continued to serve as standard bearers while Jon Flanagan briefly flew the flag after the latter’s departure until Alexander-Arnold – the real ‘Scouse Cafu‘ – stepped up in Klopp’s first full season as the latest local totem. He was followed three years later by Jones, who emerged after being imparted with the former captain’s wisdom during his brief spell as the club’s under-18 manager.
Both players became Liverpool’s first local-born players since Gerrard to make over 200 appearances and made no secret of their respective personal targets to emulate him further by taking full ownership of the armband. Barring a prodigal return, something that is more difficult for Alexander-Arnold after last summer’s fractious exit, neither will realise that aim.
Burning ambition drove the pair’s moves overseas, but they are not the only ones to develop cabin fever within the former Kirkby crop. Although Merseyside-born rather than in Liverpool itself, Quansah and Tyler Morton also pursued transfers abroad with Bayer Leverkusen and Lyon, which have already paid dividends away from fleeting first-team involvements. A debut season in the Bundesliga elevated the Warrington-born defender to a place in England’s World Cup squad this summer while Morton, a holding midfielder, has thrived after being given free rein in Ligue 1. It was a similar story for fellow non-native Caoimhin Kelleher, who made the ‘easy’ decision of leaving for Brentford after his own path to succeeding Alisson as first-choice goalkeeper was inexplicably blocked by Giorgi Mamardashvili. Fans have continued to track the trio’s progress from afar, somewhat wistfully, in hopes that their club’s hierarchy will someday realise the error of its ways in sanctioning their sales.
Jones’s immediate replacements at the local vanguard, meanwhile, are conspicuous by their absence. Danns remains the sole survivor in Andoni Iraola’s current squad but has been beset by injury problems over the past 12 months. The striker only made his long-awaited return to action in last week’s tempestuous ‘mini derby’ with Everton U21s at Goodison Park.
At a time when youth development is front and centre for many of their Premier League rivals, Liverpool are in danger of falling away
A prospective run in the side appears increasingly improbable with record signing Alexander Isak leading the line, Hugo Ekitike’s looming return and a pursuit of more attacking reinforcements such as PSG’s Bradley Barcola expected before the transfer window closes. Iraola is well-versed on the importance of local identity after spending almost his entire playing career at Athletic Club, whose ‘cantera’ policy is notorious for an intake of players that are either of Basque origin or birth. He was forthright about a desire to keep Jones at all costs, using his inaugural address to underline the importance of a local nucleus. But if the Basque head coach gets off to a rocky start, as he did at Bournemouth, opportunities for Danns to stake a claim in and around the first team will be further limited.
At a time when youth development is front and centre for many of their Premier League rivals, Liverpool are in danger of falling away. Reigning champions Arsenal continue to thrive with Hale End graduates Bukayo Saka and Myles Lewis-Skelly while Manchester City have made Phil Foden and Nico O’Reilly focal points in their brave new era under Enzo Maresca. Even Chelsea, the aforementioned billionaire bottlers, count Reece James and Levi Colwill from their Cobham pipeline. United also continue to proudly boast of fielding a homegrown player in every matchday squad since 1937.
Klopp’s tempered his vision of an authentically local team by admitting he would settle in the interim for becoming a club where everyone with ‘a Scouse soul’ wanted to play. That may be all which Liverpool have left to cling with no legitimate successors readily available to assume to the mantle recently vacated by Jones’s move to Italy.
A banner displayed at Anfield on last season’s final day in tribute to departing stalwarts Andy Robertson and Mohamed Salah asked, ‘When will we see your like again’. The same question can now be posed about the next Scouser to don the famous red shirt.
