Conor Bradley is on the move. The eye test is borne out by impressive numbers. The 20-year-old Tyrone tyro has five assists for Liverpool in three January appearances spanning 10 days. His first goal landed on Wednesday night in between neat balls for Diogo Jota and Dominik Szoboszlai to score in the 4-1 rout of Chelsea.
It was his clinical, low strike that got Anfield trembling. Starting inside his own half, Bradley’s run turned a half-yard over Raheem Sterling into clear daylight by the time Luis Díaz found his long-striding run. The finish across Djordje Petrovic’s body was perfection.
“LOOK AT HIS FACE!” screamed Darren Fletcher on TNT commentary. “TWENTY YEARS OF AGE. A PRODUCT OF THE LIVERPOOL ACADEMY.”
The eyes of the football world were on the border boy from Aghyaran, a rural parish closer to Ballybofey than Omagh.
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“I just feel like I am in a dream, it is unbelievable,” said Bradley afterwards. “I couldn’t believe it went in. I just thought – I am going to hit it here and it went in the bottom corner. I didn’t know what to do so I went over to the corner and did a knee slide. It was brilliant.”
While being a product of the Liverpool academy, Bradley also came through the Irish Football Association’s centralised academy, training three times a week while also attending Liverpool’s mini-academy at Stormont and playing for Dungannon Swifts before the move to England in 2019.
“I had been involved in youth football for a long, long time, seen a lot of good players but Conor was something different even at eight or nine,” Rory Lynch, his coach at St Patrick’s FC, told the BBC. “He was a totally different character.”
A teenager recruited by Liverpool with a Tyrone GAA background with Aghyaran St Davog’s might have been expected to have been picked up by FAI scouts. But any notion that he might line out for the Republic one day ended on September 8th, 2021 when then Northern Ireland manager Ian Baraclough capped him off the bench in a nil-all World Cup qualifier against Switzerland at Windsor Park. He was 18 years old. The IFA have been burnt by the FAI enough times to know they had a rare find, who first wore their jersey at age 14.
Current Fifa rules ‘cap-tie’ an international player after three games, if at least one is competitive. Bradley now has 13 caps for Northern Ireland, the most recent being against Denmark last June before a back injury limited his involvement.
Despite impressing Jürgen Klopp in preseason, growing pains took him off the German’s radar until a December run in the League Cup defeat of West Ham. Injury to Trent Alexander-Arnold opened the door for his current run in the team.
“I have known it for a while because [Liverpool coaches] Pepijn Lijnders and Vitor Matos sit in my office and say they would put both hands in the fire for Conor,” Klopp says.
“I loved him from the first day. I did not need a lot of convincing. The thing is, he did extremely well [on loan] at Bolton. He comes back, looks top in preseason. Wow. Then he is out for five months with issues that only young people have. Thank God time can sort it. Since he is back it has been a joy to watch him. It is all credit to the academy.”
Bolton Wanderers used Bradley as an attacking right winger last season and despite the unforgiving nature of League One, he bagged seven goals and assisted six more while amassing 4,000 minutes in the English third tier. He was voted player of the year by fans and peers alike.
Last Sunday’s 5-2 win over Norwich City in the FA Cup, when the number 84 raided down the right flank to create two goals, confirmed all suspicions. Wednesday night at Anfield proved that Baraclough’s early investment will yield a massive windfall for Northern Ireland.
“I heard him saying [German version of Tyrone accent]: ‘I was surprised the goal went in,’” beamed Klopp. “He’s an incredible boy. The crowd were already singing his name. He’s flying at the moment and rightly so. He’s working hard.
“In the summer quite a few people said we need another right back. Blah, blah, blah. We were really positive about Conor and now he has made a really big step.”
A star is born. Conor Bradley is on the move. Arsenal this Sunday at the Emirates. Keep up.
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