Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp wants a team of Scousers.
"We’re all dreaming of a team full of Carraghers."
This was the song that was regularly belted from The Kop and accompanied the career of Jamie Carragher all the way through his 500 plus games for the Reds.
Fans just love it when local kids breakthrough into the first team and put their hearts and souls into the club by showing more passion, tenacity, and grit than your average signing.
Over the years Liverpool have built something of legacy having discovered and developed real quality from the streets surrounding Anfield – a legacy made up of Carragher, Steven Gerrard, Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, and now Trent Alexander Arnold.
Building on this is Jurgen Klopp’s next vision for the club.
However, when people talk about the greatest youth academies in the world, Dutch club Ajax and Barcelona’s La Masia are more often than not mentioned above the reds, and probably rightly so.
Ajax, in particular, seems to have a never-ending conveyor belt of world-class talent that has funded their success for years while Barcelona fielded a starting 11 of players that had all spent some time in their youth ranks on the 25th of November 2012.
You could argue that players such as Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique shouldn’t have counted as they spent significant time overseas at Arsenal and Manchester United before Barcelona paid big money to bring them home, but even if you take those two out of the equation it’s still an impressive feat.
More from Rush The Kop
- Set to return, Virgil Van Dijk facing heavy criticism back home
- Liverpool making late comebacks all the rage once again
- Wolves tilt gives Klopp opportunity to tinker with lineup following international duty
- Players to watch in the matchup with Wolves
- Predicting Liverpool’s Next Five Premier League Fixtures
That moment was the envy of the footballing world at the time and a feat that Jurgen Klopp would like to match at Anfield.
"Before a recent match with Brighton, the BBC reported that he said: “The dream is to have all the boys [from the academy]. The dream is to have a team full of Scousers.“Our academy is producing some great players in the past few years. We try. What we want to be in the sport for everybody with a Scouse soul. We want to be of course if you love football and are talented we want you to be here.”"
It may seem like the musings of a mad man and the cynical amongst us may see Klopp’s words as just another way of endearing himself to the fans and local community.
With the cost of buying ready-made players growing all the time it makes sense to invest in your youth academy and Liverpool have seemingly spent much of their recent transfer resources getting ahead of the game.
Significant investment has been made in a new training ground that will see the youth set up train at the same facility as the first team, allowing for easier progression and communication between the different age groups.
Scouting has also been set on finding the world’s best young talent to bring to Liverpool and polish into first-team stars.
Yes, many of the youth players that are on the verge of breaking through aren’t necessarily from the Liverpool area, but with Trent Alexander Arnold and Curtis Jones already cementing themselves as the team’s Scouse heart you only have to look at the likes of Neco Williams, Sepp van den Berg, Ki-Jana Hoever, Harvey Elliott and Rhian Brewster to see that Klopp’s dream of building an entire team from The Academy may not be that far away.