'They didn’t know, nobody knew' -the untold story of Liverpool's young 'Sami Hyypia' who returned from broken back to win over Jurgen Klopp
| Published date | 11 April 2021 |
| Publication title | Liverpool Echo: Web Edition Articles (England) |
12 months later he was on the podium with his Reds team-mates in Madrid, celebrating their Champions League final victory over Tottenham Hotspur but still awaiting his senior debut.
Now, a further two years down the line, the 24-year-old is firmly part of the Liverpool first team picture as Klopp’s side lock horns with European football’s biggest giants once again.
Previously an academy player at financially-stricken Bolton Wanderers, the then-19-year-old had secured a scholarship at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte after leaving the Whites, having never signed professional terms, at the end of his contract in 2016 following their relegation to League One.
Yet he surprisingly signed for Liverpool just days before he was due to fly out to the United States following a successful trial. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Training with Klopp’s first team for the first time in 2018, only ill-timed injuries denied him game-time that year before he spent the 2019/20 campaign on loan at VfB Stuttgart, bar a brief mid-season return to Merseyside in the midst of a defensive injury crisis to face Everton in the FA Cup, as he helped the German outfit win promotion to the Bundesliga.
He had looked set to leave Liverpool again last summer and was even left out of their Champions League squad as a result. But Reds defensive injuries have once again forced Klopp to turn to the centre-back.
“ Nat Phillips – wow. I couldn’t be more happy,” the German said after handing the centre-back his Premier League debut against West Ham back in October. “Three years ago he was on his way to America to study at college.
“Tonight he played for Liverpool, it’s a really nice story.”
And what a story. But one you already know. One that everybody knows. Afterall, Phillips’ slow rise to the Liverpool first team is well-documented.
Now, with 14 games under his belt so far this season, he has battled Real Madrid and the legendary Karim Benzema as Klopp’s men again face the foes that haunted their dreams for a year following their Champions League final defeat to Zinedine Zidane’s side in Kiev.
Admittedly, the defender endured arguably the most difficult performance of his season in Madrid as Liverpool fell to a 3-1 first leg defeat.
Returning to Anfield for a second leg with no fans, Phillips now faces the biggest game of his career so far and it’ll be a special European night with a difference if Klopp’s side can somehow find a way to progress to the semi-finals.
But while Phillips’ Liverpool journey is well-known, his initial pathway to Anfield is not with his road to the Reds first team certainly an unorthodox one.
It’s the story of an overlooked, part-time player, constantly playing catch-up after a serious injury, who sidestepped his way through the uncertainty of a struggling club’s financial ruin into signing for the future champions of the world.
And despite being the son of Bolton Wanderers legend and club Academy Manager Jimmy, his new-found status is one none of his former Whites youth coaches or team-mates would ever have envisaged.
“It’s a fairy-tale story. You wouldn’t have foreseen that,” admits former Bolton academy coach Nicky Spooner, who first started coaching Phillips when the Liverpool defender was just seven years old. “When you’ve been part of a young boy’s development for so long, it’s great to see them play at any level of football. Especially the boys who have bounced back.
“I’ve been very surprised though, I’ll be honest. You’re bringing a boy through the system. Would you have thought he’d have been playing for Liverpool No.
“Ideally he would have been given an opportunity at Bolton but Nat chose his own pathway in life. He’s balanced it so brilliantly.
“Maybe it was because there was no pressure. Now an opportunity has come and he’s taken it. He’s taken it with both hands and grabbed it. Now he’s a Premier League footballer!
“I’m so happy for the boy. To do what he has done is such a short space of time, he’s given all lads hope. There is a route back.”
While Spooner oversaw the majority of Phillips’ time in the Bolton academy, Iain Brunskill was his manager when he broke into the Whites’ Under-21s set-up.
Now working in China, tasked with preparing the Chinese Under-20s for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Brunskill was previously a youth team player at Liverpool himself in the nineties before serving as a youth coach with Reds at the start of his coaching career.
And he’s equally surprised by the path Phillips has taken since leaving Bolton.
“Did I think he would go on to play in the Champions League for Liverpool” he ponders. “No, I never! Of course I never. Anyone who says they did is lying! They didn’t know, nobody knew.
“All the credit is down to him for what he’s done and how focused he is. It’s a great example of a different pathway. It’s refreshing that that pathway still exists where someone can come into it a little later on.”
Phillips is of course a late-bloomer. Having just turned 24, this season marks only his second of regular senior game-time after spending last year on loan at VfB Stuttgart.
And while it is a curious pathway, with such a late rise from nowhere particularly rare in the modern game, it is one that makes a lot more sense after digging into the defender’s background.
He was never a full-time footballer at Bolton. At 16, as his team-mates started scholarships that would ultimately end in failure at the doomed fallen giant, Phillips followed his own route, continuing as an extended schoolboy so he could complete his A-Levels at Bolton college. Already you can start to see why the defender was set to head to the United States before Liverpool came calling.
Having to overcome a serious injury along the way on such a pathway that ensured he’d already be playing catch-up, such a decision actually showcased just how dedicated he was despite only being part-time.
“I started with Nat when he was seven-years-old all the way through to when he went to sixth form,” Spooner explains. “He came back but he was a hybrid programme. He put his education first and he was planning on going to America.
“I was head of foundation so had him for seven to eleven. Then I changed to head of youth phase so had him from eleven to sixteen. Then I stayed with him, what with him being at school. He played for the Under-16s when he was an Under-17. He played down a year but unfortunately got a bad injury.
“He had an education background of going to Bolton School. Nat was a late developer, he wasn’t at the front of the group even though he was a good player.
“His growth took a long time to mature. He was tall and skinny. Technically he was good but physically he wasn’t in control of his body. He was a late-developer. He balanced it both. If he got playing-time, he was happy but there was always his education.
“So when it came to scholarship time, him and Jimmy wanted to do both and have the best of both worlds. They wanted the education to come first.
“There was all the uncertainty at the football club at the time. Nat was in the turmoil of it all. We didn’t know if the club would survive. So he stayed on at Bolton School and played. It was the best of both worlds and he put the work in.
“He was Under-17 and would come in and train with the Under-18s in the day if he could. If he couldn’t, he’d put the hours in and come in at night to train with the Under-16s.”
Spooner continued: “At 17 he missed a full season. He got a fracture to his lower back so he missed a full season at 17 and that delayed his development with ourselves even more. He did very well. He was in sixth form and missed 12 months of football.
“The boys go full-time when they’re 17. So he missed that. He missed two years of full-time scholarship because he stayed on as an extended schoolboy. So he missed all Under-17s and trained in the day when he could.
“He balanced it, was willing to put in the work and...
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