Jurgen Klopp raves about ‘the pass’ from Bobby Clark as four teenagers namechecked | OneFootball

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp was left raving about a sublime pass from 17-year-old Bobby Clark as the Reds beat AC Milan 4-1 in Dubai on Friday night.

Clark caught the eye with his sumptuous pass to set up Darwin Nunez for the first of his two goals, but Klopp also namechecked 18-year-old Spanish midfielder Stefan Bajcetic, 18-year-old German Melkamu Frauendorf (who played out of position at right-back) and 17-year-old Scottish winger Ben Doak.

Nunez came off the bench despite featuring in the World Cup for Uruguay but the starting XI had been together throughout this Premier League break, with Thiago and Harvey Elliott particularly impressive against Milan, while Mo Salah scored his customary goal.

“We were super-dominant. We played a really good game,” said Klopp.

“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.

“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. Oxlade, really good. Fabio when he came on, really good.

“A lot of really good things tonight and that’s why we play football.”