Exclusive: The inside story of Milos Kerkez's mega transfer to Liverpool | OneFootball

For Milos Kerkez, football was destiny.

Growing up in Vrbas as the youngest of three brothers, Kerkez knew from a very young age what he wanted to do.

"I started playing with my brothers at like four or five years old," Kerkez told me back in 2022.

"I actually didn't start in any team. I played on the streets, you know, on the streets with my brothers most of the time until like six or seven and eight.

"Then I joined the first club in my hometown, Vrbas, and that's when I started. And I started because I fell in love. I see my brother played football. My older brother played football. And when they play football, I say 'I want to play also.' So that was the moment I decide I want to start football."

Kerkez's older brother Marko was regarded as a big prospect in Vrbas and soon the brothers developed a reputation. Milos had the chance to join Serbian giants Partizan Belgrade but in the end he opted to follow his brother to Austria and signed for Rapid Vienna.

Things didn't quite work out for the brothers at Rapid Vienna. But a better opportunity awaited him in Hungary. Kerkez was a zealous young man and he was eager to prove himself, sometimes a little too eager which caused conflicts.

It was a lesson learned when he ultimately left Rapid Vienna but it only made him even more eager to grab the next chance that came his way.

"I went to Gyor for trial when I left Rapid Vienna," Kerkez recalled. "My father and then my Hungarian agent thought this was the perfect place for me and to jump fast in the first team if I do good so I went in under 15 and I stayed there and then like you know how the story went and it was a perfect time there. Really. Yeah. Perfect. Lovely time there."

Former Gyor coach Richard Henczi remembers the first time he spotted a young Kerkez running havoc in Gyor's training sessions.

"I just heard there is a crazy guy in the 2003 group. Initially, he played as a no.10 at that time and he was the captain of the team without any Hungarian knowledge," Henczi says.

The lack of Hungarian knowledge would prove to be an obstacle in the pair's first training session.

"I had a training session with 12 kids and I showed them what they have to do, how at the end of the drill you have to make a pass and he was the only one who made shot always with power. So I was shouting at him like 'what are you doing, I said you have to pass' and other kid said he doesn't speak Hungarian," Henczi recalls.

"So then I talk with him in English and then he understood what I asked, so that was my first impression and then I saw something in him because his agility was really good. He just wanted to win every dribble and every tackle in the training sessions. And he had the mentality that a captain needs to have."

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Already, after just a few months at Gyor, many senior figures at the club recognised that in Kerkez they have a supreme talent on their hands.

Plans were forged for the club to create a pathway for him into the first team, who were playing in Hungary's second tier at the time.

"We thought the no.10 would not be his position for adult football so yeah somehow we managed to put him on the left back and that quickly became his position," Henczi explains.

The shift to playing as a full-back suited Kerkez's intensity and gun-ho energy. Having played in more offensive roles, he was also able to contribute a lot going forward.

Very quickly, Kerkez started to dominate youth football and as his performances improved, more and more training sessions with the first team followed, where he was welcomed by seasoned professionals like Tamas Priskin and Nemanja Andric.

He became only the third youngest debutant in Gyor's history when he made his debut at just 16-years-old. In just his third start, he won a penalty by bombing into the box and using his quick speed to force his opponents into a foul.

That burst of speed became a strong feature in Kerkez's game, with Gyor utilising him and often instigating their attacks on the left flank.

"It was crazy for me at the time," Kerkez remembered. "Playing regularly it was a really big thing for me. The league was really physical, and it gave me a lot of hard tools and it was it was a really exciting time for me. That was really a great time."

By the time January rolled around, Kerkez was looking forward to helping Gyor in their ambitions to gain promotion to Hungary's first tier. But those expectations were perhaps naive.

Being such a young age, and having produced some really impressive performances, Kerkez had found himself on the radar of some of Europe's giants, including Juventus and several other German teams.

But it was a call from Paolo Maldini that ultimately swayed him to leave Gyor after just six months in the club's first team.

"Everything was going fast and my decision was to stay and to play the whole season [at Gyor], at least until the summer to grow more physical," Kerkez said.

"It happened in like two days before transfer window ended. Maldini called me personally and my father. He directly called us not not over other people. He called us directly, and he wanted to meet with me and my father.

"They had a game back then with Bologna. And they travelled back, he called us. And yeah, that was the big aspect for me to go there because, you know, when Maldini's calling, you're not thinking too much."

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"It doesn't happen every day that someone from second division goes to a club like that and so it was a shock, but totally understandable. We knew there were other Italian teams who wanted to take him on trial and then somehow it got to Maldini and they worked really hard to sign him," Henczi remembers.

At Milan, Kerkez went into the club's Primavera team. But he was given regular opportunities to train with the Italian side's first team alongside the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Theo Hernandez.

"The first time I go there and I'm looking around Ibra and Hernandez and Leao and all these guys. I watched them on TV like two months ago and now I was there training with them, you know, so it was really crazy and a really positive experience and I learned a lot from them and it was really great," Kerkez remembers.

Going to Milan also played a key role in improving Kerkez's tactical awareness. At the club's academy, he would regularly participate in video analysis sessions to maximise his potential.

"You can learn a lot tactically in Italian football. In Primavera, even after training after games, we do a video analysis for one and a half hour. We did a lot of video analysis, weekly and everything so I grow up really tactically to play more clever and to use my head more on the pitch," Kerkez said.

All the time, the young Hungarian kept improving. In 2021, still only 17-years-old, he made his first appearance for the club's first team in a pre-season friendly and scored a brace in the space of just a few minutes.

There was the promise of a bigger role at senior level, but it never came. Instead, Kerkez caught the eye for AC Milan in the UEFA Youth League.