Ever get involved in a what ever happened to?? conversation? Often it springs from a young footballer who shone brightly for a few months before disappearing to the reserves, then to Bury, then to the Beezer Homes League and last heard of playing in the Hyundai A-League for Perth Glory. It may be a player nobody else would have heard of unless they followed a clubs reserves or youth sides or read their match programme or club magazine from cover-to-cover, but they had been hailed as the English Johan Cruyff, or the next ?insert club legend here? by a coach or senior player.

Please welcome the next?
Often people will hark back to the great Manchester United FA Youth Cup winning sides of the early 1990s which featured the likes of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, as well as Keith Gillespie, Robbie Savage and Phil Mulryne who went on to make their names elsewhere (how many next George Bests is that?). But what about Ben Thornley, or Chris Casper, or John O?Kane, or Kevin Pilkington? They were all ?bigged? up as future internationals, but at what should now be the peak of their careers, they were last spotted turning out for Halifax (2004), Reading (2002), Hyde United (2003) and Notts County (2005) respectively. Only Pilkington is still featuring in the Football League, all-be-it in the bottom tier, hardly satisfactory for a man who Peter Schmeichel termed ?a future England number one.?

Likewise at my club, Liverpool, who clinched the Youth Cup in 1996, defeating West Ham 4-1 over two legs with teams which read:
First Leg: Naylor; Prior, Brazier, Carragher, Roberts, S. Quinn, Thompson, M. Quinn, Cassidy, Newby (Larmour), Parkinson. Goalscorers: Newby, Larmour.
Second Leg: Naylor; Prior, Brazier, Carragher, Roberts, S. Quinn, Thompson, M. Quinn, Cassidy (Turkington), Owen, Newby (Parkinson). Goalscorers: Owen, S. Quinn.

So, where are they now?
Only David Thompson, Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen made an impact on the Liverpool first-team, with Jon Newby making a handful of substitute appearances before being sold to Bury. Of the rest, only Gareth Roberts and Andy Parkinson are still with Football League clubs, and David Larmour and Jamie Cassidy had brief League careers before moving out of full-time football. The others, on leaving Anfield, found themselves playing in lower-League reserve sides or for local non-League teams. So how did the cream of young English talent find itself so scattered to the four winds?

The ones who made it
Of course we could talk at great lengths about the current England internationals, Carragher and Owen, mentioned above, but it is perhaps David Thompson?s career which proves more interesting.

David Thompson at Liverpool

Marked for greatness from a very young age, Thompson?s first involvement in the first-team came at the tail-end of the 1994/95 season whilst still just 17 years-old, though he didn?t make it on to the pitch. He had to wait another sixteen months for his debut, coming on as a substitute in a 2-0 win over Arsenal in August 1996 and again the following week against Sunderland in a 0-0 draw. Those were his only League appearances that season. By 1997/98 Owen and Carragher had cemented their places in the first-team squad, if not the starting eleven, but Thompson found himself loaned out to Swindon Town, before returning to Liverpool to make another handful of appearances. Further slow progress was made during the 1998/99 season as he started four games and appeared from the bench ten times, but in the 1999/2000 season he made 27 Premiership appearances, scoring three times, and he finally seemed to be making the impact expected of him. However, Thompson himself wasn?t satisfied, he had set a personal target to become an established first-teamer by the age of 22, and he felt he wasn?t quite there. He took the opportunity to leave Liverpool for a team that could give him regular football and signed for Coventry City in August 2000. At Highfield Road Thompson developed further as a player, scoring 15 goals in 66 appearances over two seasons before Graeme Souness snapped him up for Blackburn. Thompson?s early form at Ewood Park earned him an England call-up, but injury forced him to withdraw from the squad. Further injuries have continued to blight his career and he is yet to make an appearance this season. However, when fit again his combatitive style should mean he fits perfectly into Mark Hughes? side.

Finding their level
To a certain extent this is what Thompson did, and what Ritchie Partridge, for instance failed to do. Thompson took the brave and heart-breaking decision to walk away from the club he supported as a boy for the sake of his career, Ritchie Partridge ?a talented young winger who is destined for greatness? believed his own hype and stuck around at Anfield until he was just shy of twenty-fifth birthday, making just three League Cup appearances. Partridge is now attempting to build a career with Sheffield Wednesday having been released by Liverpool during the summer.

Ritchie Partridge playing for Liverpool

Of course players do not always have the choice as to when they leave a club. Andy Parkinson was not offered a professional contract after the Youth Cup win, and moved across Merseyside to Tranmere Rovers, playing in their 2000 League Cup Final defeat by Leicester, and he is now making waves playing on the left-wing for Grimsby Town. Another to follow a similar route was Gareth Roberts; released in the summer of 1999 he joined Ronnie Whelan?s Panionios before joining Tranmere after three months in Greece. He too appeared in that League Cup Final, and earned a place in the Wales team. Roberts remains Tranmere?s regular left-back and a member of Welsh squad.

Jon Newby broke into Liverpool?s first-team squad during the 1999/2000 season (remember this was a time when Fowler and Owen were carrying injuries galore and the striking back-up consisted of Titi Camara, ?Mad? Erik Meijer and an aging Karl-Heinz Riedle). Newby proved to be a hard-worker, but in his four appearances he seemed to lack the goalscoring touch required, and so when Bury offered ?100,000 for his services in March 2001 all parties involved were satisfied the move would be for the best. Yet to find the goalscoring touch in League Football, Newby returned to Bury in the summer of 2004 after an unhappy season with Huddersfield.

Going a little lower
Most of the 1996 team have since found their way into English non-League football, with varying levels of (relative) success. One exception to this is striker David Larmour, who was released in the summer of ?96 and signed for Doncaster Rovers. In twenty appearances in the Third Division he failed to find the back of the net and with the club in a perilous financial situation he was again released. He returned to his native Northern Ireland to sign for Linfield in September 1997 and he made an immediate impact, scoring over twenty goals in each of his first four seasons and picking up a number of honours, and a call-up to the Northern Ireland squad in August 2000. Injuries have meant that Larmour?s goalscoring totals have slowed in recent seasons, but his strike-rate remains impressive. It may be part-time football, but the Irish League gives him a chance to play regularly in Europe, and in recent years there has been something of a Liverpool reunion at the club with former Anfield reserves Phil Charnock and Paul Dalglish playing at Windsor Park.

David Larmour at Linfield

Injury nightmares
One of the most tragic things in football is when a promising young player is struck down by injury. Jamie Cassidy had recovered from a broken leg to star in Liverpool?s run to Youth Cup winning campaign, and was also beginning to feature regularly for the reserves. Indeed his form so impressed that he was awarded a squad number during the 1996/97 season. Alas, injury struck again and Cassidy?s development, both physically and skill-wise, was severely stunted. He moved to Cambridge United in 1999, but lasted just one season in Division Two before moving to non-League Northwich Victoria, where once again his impact was minimal. If Cassidy hadn?t lost almost two years of his career at such a crucial time, who knows what might have been?

Reckless youth
Aside from the well publicised 1998 Liverpool Christmas Party shenanigans (involving Jamie Carragher and some whipped cream if your memory fails), Liverpool?s recent youth products have been spared the worst of controversies, such as alleged rapes and drug use, which have blighted other clubs young players. That is not to say it hasn?t happened, and the law of averages states that at least one player listed above has dabbled, to whichever extent, in drugs (be they the illegal type or the legal type, i.e. alcohol). Certainly from George Best and Jimmy Greaves through to Diego Maradona and Chris Armstrong, young players? heads have been turned, and careers tainted, if not ruined, by the cultural accoutrements which are foisted on every young person, in every walk of life. However, the use of drink and drugs would hardly have the same obvious negative effect on a factory worker as they would on a footballer, and your average factory worker isn?t taking home ?500 a week in his late teens!

Not good enough?
The import of foreign players may have had an affect (but that’s another article or ten), but the simple fact is that some of these young players just weren?t good enough; they peaked at eighteen, and failed to develop any further. Why? Well they could have had their heads turned by success at a very young age, they could have been struck down by injuries, or it could just have been that they developed quicker than those around them in their teens, but were eventually surpassed by others. Of the fourteen who played in the two legs of that Final, six have went on to have decent Football League careers. Considering that the Youth team would?ve been made up of a two year ?snap-shot?, and the first-team perhaps fifteen years, six out of fourteen isn?t a bad ?success? rate. The fourteen may have been the cream, but to reach the very top you have to be the cr?me de la cr?me.

Footnote:
As a by the way, West Ham were also served quite well by their 1996 Youth side, with Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard emerging as two of the most talented players of their generation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2005 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Liverpool. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.