The addition of some players in Liverpool’s 32-man squad went largely unnoticed as most eyes were glued to obtaining a sight of Jordan Henderson boarding the team’s private charter flight to Germany on Saturday morning.
Naturally, fans will already be familiar with players like 17-year-old Ben Doak and 18-year-old Bobby Clark because manager Jurgen Klopp gave them their Premier League debuts last season due to their excellent improvement at the academy level.
Fewer people, though, are likely to be familiar with left-back Calum Scanlon, who is gearing up for his third full season at Anfield after signing a £500,000 transfer from his old team Birmingham City in December 2020.
In the two years since making his debut as a 15-year-old, the 18-year-old has established himself as an essential player of Marc Bridge-Wilkinson’s Under-18s team. Scanlon’s early professional development was so extensive on Merseyside that his first appearance for the U18s came in a 3-0 Premier League North triumph over Derby County after he had finished a day of school as a Year 11 student.
That’s all you can hope for, Bridge-Wilkinson told the ECHO of the defender’s impressive cameo in the second half. “He looked at ease on his debut, he didn’t look out of place at this level, and that’s all you can ask for,” he added.
Scanlon participated in a concerted effort to attract young people to Anfield between 2018 and 2022. Melkamu Frauendorf, Stefan Bajcetic, Kaide Gordon, Keyrol Figueroa, Conor Bradley, Mateusz Musialowski, Trent Kone-Doherty, Doak, and Clark all signed scholarship agreements with the Reds during the same four-year span.
At the time of Liverpool’s initial interest in the Birmingham-born youngster, Scanlon’s family were tasked with assessing whether a move to Anfield would be of benefit to their son’s development. That decision came less than six months after one Birmingham City academy graduate, by the name of Jude Bellingham, had earned a £25m move to Bundesliga giants Borussia Dortmund after proving that an apprenticeship in the English Football League still has plenty to offer the game’s novice stars.
But it’s fair to say that Scanlon hasn’t looked back since leaving the West Midlands two and a half years ago as he gets ready to mingle with fellow full-backs Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold as well as the rest of Klopp’s senior team in Baden-Wurttemberg over the next eight days.
Despite a four-month injury layoff at the beginning of 2023, his last campaign was promising since he drew the attention of UEFA Youth League judges after first-choice left-back Luke Chambers switched to Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premiership in the middle of the campaign to gain first-team experience. Scanlon made his Premier League 2 debut in February during the team’s 3-1 loss to Manchester City.
