LEWIS STEELE: Conor Bradley’s rise has been meteoric but Liverpool’s coaches had told Jurgen Klopp to promote him for years… and now fans want to see him start ahead of Trent Alexander-Arnold

Jurgen Klopp was enjoying some much-needed rest and relaxation during the recent winter break in Dubai when he was approached by a guy in a floral shirt. It was a Bolton fan who begged the Liverpool manager to let Conor Bradley go back on loan to the League One side.

“Too late,” was Klopp’s response, wearing a “You’ll Never Walk Alone” cap, which he put on on purpose to lure a Manchester United fan who asked for a photo. And ‘too late’ was the core of most reactions to clubs who also approached Bradley this summer.

Bradley is the name on everyone’s lips after his star performance against Chelsea on Wednesday, where he scored once and provided two more assists. How poignant that this match was the last his father, Joe, would see, following the tragic news that he had passed away this weekend after a long illness.

It casts a somber and heartbreaking tone on what has been a fairytale month for the young full-back. Everyone who knows Bradley well has cited his family as playing a crucial role in his development. It is now probably up to the player whether he travels to Arsenal or not.

After scoring five goals and providing five assists from right back for the third-tier club, Klopp and his coaching staff had seen enough to conclude that Bradley would play a crucial role in this new version of the team from the Reds, which the German manager called ‘Liverpool 2.0’.

Jurgen Klopp posed for a photo with a fan on holiday after brazenly calling for Bradley to be sent back to Bolton

Bradley’s man of the match during Liverpool’s 4-1 win over Chelsea was made even more poignant by the tragic news that his father passed away this weekend after a long illness

Bradley was praised during 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 talking point of the Liverpool fanbase and beyond, not just those in the Kop who chanted his name several times during a man-of-the-match performance against billionaire boy Chelsea on Wednesday night. Apart from his goal contributions, he put in an imperious defensive display at the other end.

That was his fifth consecutive start for the Reds and now there was a real debate over whether he should keep the shirt for a season-defining trip to Arsenal against Trent Alexander-Arnold on Sunday. The fact that this was even a debate is a testament to Bradley’s abilities.

In a straw poll of Liverpool fans on this reporter’s social media, in which around 1,000 readers voted, 55 percent said Bradley should be preferred to Alexander-Arnold, the vice-captain and creator of the Premier League. Leaders of the League.

Bradley’s ride was nothing short of meteoric. But how did he go from a young lad playing on park pitches in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, to the star performer in the world’s best league?

No one is better placed to chart the youngster’s rise than Joe McAree, a legend of the Northern Irish football scene who is now in his late 70s. “I was actually the guy who was first told about him by a referee who was from Conor’s hometown of Castlederg,” McAree told Mail Sport.

“He told me he is the best boy he has ever seen and we should bring him to our youth set-up in Dungannon. He was eight years old, so I laughed and, well… the road from Castlederg to Dungannon is a horrible drive – like a snake pass.

‘I said I wasn’t going to take an eight-year-old and drive him up and down that road three times a week… but I thought I’d keep an eye on him. About three years later one of my coaches asked me to go to a minor final in Omagh one night – it was St. Patrick’s against another team.

Fans had debated whether Trent Alexander-Arnold or Bradley should start against Arsenal

Bradley has been tipped to become one of Northern Ireland’s best players

Both Bradley and Jarell Quansah have been major beneficiaries of the credit market

‘He said, ‘There’s a little boy called Bradley playing, he’s playing two or three years above his age group.’ I laughed. So I drove to Omagh and watched the final. Conor played striker, two feet shorter than everyone else and two or three years younger.

“I saw his parents, introduced myself after the game and invited him to Dungannon. I spoke to him in the little café we had and he said, ‘We’ll think about it for a while and then we’ll get back to you.’

Bradley actually rejected the approach, but realized a few months later that he had made the wrong decision. A few years later, Dungannon Swifts received a call from Liverpool, who sent two scouts to view the club’s facilities, which has spent £2 million on its youth set-up.

He spent time traveling back and forth to Merseyside and seasoned observers of the academy say he is a down-to-earth, quiet lad but a studious professional. “Conor and I have been friends the whole time,” Liverpool’s Hull City loanee Tyler Morton told Mail Sport.

‘He has become a real top player. Everyone at the academy knew he would. Jarell (Quansah) too, he’s absolutely brilliant. I grew up with him and trained with him since I was six or seven. It’s nice to see them doing well and representing the club I love and support.”

Bradley and Quansah have benefited hugely from the loan market, with the latter spending half of last season at Bristol Rovers, also in League One, and has now made 17 first-team appearances this season.

One of the themes of Klopp’s reign is the way he always looks to the academy for solutions, rather than asking the owners to open the checkbook. He recently mentioned how assistant coaches Pep Lijnders and Vitor Matos had been ‘in his ear’ for years to promote Bradley.

When deciding where to send young stars, Liverpool placed great importance on the trust they had in the club. For example, following Bradley’s development, the Reds opted for the Lancashire club to send Calvin Ramsay this month. Fabio Carvalho went to Hull because of their good work with Morton.

Klopp revealed that his assistants had pushed for Bradley to be promoted to the first team

“Conor has an insatiable desire to keep getting better and that’s why I know he will play hundreds of games for Liverpool,” Bolton boss Ian Evatt told The Times this week. It is indeed difficult to find anyone willing to say a bad word about him.

Almost anyone asked to talk about him will use the same words or phrases to describe the 20-year-old: humble, talented and driven. Mother Linda is undoubtedly a major influence, having acted as her son’s unofficial agent since his early days in football.

Dad Joe was also present during his football upbringing and the only heart-warming thought after his tragic passing is that he died knowing his son ‘made it’ and will go on to fulfill his dreams at Liverpool.

She wasn’t really a football fan, but had a solid education. She is now his taxi driver and has negotiated his deals for ten years. It is understood that at the age of 17, Ms Bradley rejected the ‘promise’ of a professional deal and instead told Conor to earn his contract through a scholarship.

Former Northern Ireland boxer Carl Frampton said Bradley could be the country’s best footballer since George Best. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it shows the highest levels at which this child is judged. McAree names another football legend besides Bradley.

“The people at Liverpool know a lot more about football than I do,” says McAree, whose son Rodney was on the Reds’ books in the 1990s. ‘But I will say this: when someone decides to put him in Steven Gerrard’s role, you will have an even better player… that’s all I can say!

‘He is a talented boy, with a great attitude. From the first day I met him in the cafe, he looked me in the eyes and smiled, it just felt different. For an 11-year-old boy it was just different, the focus he had. He knew what he wanted to be: he was a Liverpool supporter.

‘This boy can go from box to box like a reindeer, has enormous stamina, he can put passes in places you wouldn’t know were there. It’s a fairy tale. I’m waiting patiently for him to move into midfield and become the next Gerrard.’