Klopp: Youngsters showed a glimpse of what is to come

Jurgen Klopp says Liverpool’s academy stars took a big step forward as the Reds ended their training camp on a high with a 4-1 victory over AC Milan.

With the World Cup in its final stages, normal service will be resumed in just over a week when the Premier League season restarts.

Every club have had to work around the unique circumstances of a mid-season hiatus  and having their international representatives come back into camp at differing times.

With those absences in mind, it has allowed the next generation to have the invaluable opportunity to train and play alongside the senior squad and against men.

Speaking after the victory to the Official site, the manager was overall very satisfied:

“We played a really good game. I liked how our midfield was connected, I liked our build-up because they surprised us a little bit with the system – I'm not sure they played it very often but because of their problems what they have with injuries, they changed. So building up with three, we needed to adapt a little bit. When we did that, pressing was really good as well.

“And, of course, when you bring on the kids [in the] second half and you see the pass from Bobby Clark and the whole performance from Stefan, the performance from Mel as a right full-back and then Ben Doak comes on, 17 years old, and is this kind of natural force, it's really cool to see. 

“In these 10, 11 days, the kids especially, everybody made a real step forward. That's why these things are so important, that we can involve them. And in general, tonight was the result of the last 10 days what we saw in training and tonight we could bring it on the pitch, which is obviously nice.”

The icing on the cake for those involved in the inner sanctum was the fact that Bobby Clark and Ben Doak played key parts in the build up to a couple of the goals and the overall confidence that will bring to the young prospects.

"(The performances) were absolutely cool. I'm not sure the Academy could watch the game tonight but when you see these boys and performing in a game like this, it's cool. It's a real physical game, adult football is a physical game and the boys need to make these steps [so] they can get ready for it step by step.

"How I said, the physical part will come but until you are that strong, you can create a lot of ideas, you can do things a bit smarter. And when you see what Bobby did with the pass for Darwin... and then Darwin scores twice, so really nice obviously.”