A few eyebrows were raised when Californian teenager Marc Pelosi joined Liverpool’s youth academy last November.

Pelosi declined offers from UCLA and Major League Soccer, the traditional routes for young American prospects, to join the Reds. Many wondered if the then 17-year-old midfielder would make an impact during his stay at Merseyside or follow Anton Perterlin who fell by the wayside at Everton in 2008.

So far, it has been a wise decision by Pelosi. In his first year with the Reds, Pelosi has made quite an impression on the team’s coaching staff. Liverpool’s academy director Frank McParland believes that once Pelosi develops his talent, he can be one of the best central midfielders in the English Premier League.

“He reminds me of Gareth Barry of Man City,” McParland told Goal.com. “We think he has really high potential.”

According to McParland, there are not many young midfielders who come into English youth academies with the rare combination of size (Pelosi is 6 feet tall), speed and passing ability as the American does. Though the expectations are high, McParland and the team’s coaching staff have been careful about bringing him along slowly.

Liverpool academy director on Pelosi

“He reminds me of Gareth Barry of Manchester City. We think he has really high potential” –  Frank McParland

Liverpool ensures that its youth academy players are a close-knit unit despite the fact that all of the players are competing for first-team opportunities.

Outside of training and working out together, the players live near to each other in an apartment building in the city’s centre. If necessary, they attend high school and continuing education classes together in private classes separate from normal students. They eat at least two meals together every day. It is an insulated environment but it allows the club to protect its young players from the obvious social pressures of playing for such a high-profile Premier League club.

Pelosi admits that the adjustment from being a young man in California to a full-time footballer was tough at first but was thankful for the team’s approach.

“When I first moved, it was hard.” Pelosi told Goal.com. “I didn’t have too many friends, but the people at the club really helped in fitting in.”

Now, Pelosi sees Liverpool as his second home. His friends, fellow youth team-mates, are close-knit but isolated from distractions. It is the trade-off for having an opportunity to learn from some of the world’s best. Dealing with high expectations is exactly why Pelosi decided to pick Liverpool over MLS and college in the first place.

“I choose Liverpool because it is such a big team and it is well known. I thought it would be a good fit for me,” Pelosi explained.

When Pelosi first learned of Liverpool’s interest, he admits it was “pretty overwhelming,” though he remained focused on impressing in various US youth competitions. While it all happened pretty quickly for him, McParland reveals that the club had scouted Pelosi for almost two years before deciding to sign him. Since he was born in Germany (he lived in the country until he was three years old) and his mother is also German, it was easy to bring Pelosi abroad.

McParland is a big admirer of American talent. He characterises the typical player from the US as having “exceptional attitudes” and being “physically fit.” He believes that there will continue to be an influx of American talent in Premier League though he explains that it is continually difficult to import players due to the United Kingdom’s work permit system.

“I think there are lots of players in America who can play here, the problem is the work permits situation,” McParland said.

McParland explains that one way that teams are beginning to counteract the UK’s strict immigration policies is by affiliating themselves with feeder clubs where the player can stay until he qualifies for a permit or attempt to gain a second nationality. Liverpool is currently doing that with Pelosi’s youth compatriot Villyan Bijev, who was unable to secure a work permit upon arriving at the club.

“That’s [the work permit system] not going to change so it’s progressive clubs who will put players into feeder clubs and that’s going to be the best market for the American player,” Parland said.

Fortunately for Pelosi, all he has to focus on is his development. One of the perks of joining a club with such a lengthy tradition is being able to learn from some of the best. Before he joined Liverpool in 2011, he long admired Steven Gerrard, watching the midfielder from thousands of miles afar on his television back home in the US. Within Pelosi’s first few months of being at the club, he immediately had a chance to learn under the midfielder.

Gerrard was recovering from a lengthy injury spell and played with Pelosi in the reserves. During certain training sessions, the England captain would speak with the team’s young talent, including Pelosi. Adding to Pelosi’s surreal experiences, he also had an opportunity to train directly with the first-team squad and have brief chats with Brendan Rodgers.

It is that education that Pelosi’s US Under-20 manager Tab Ramos believes will bode well. Ramos hinted that he does not expect Pelosi to feature for the US anytime soon as he needs to play in first-team games first but likes what he has seen so far.

“We think he’s someone who could [eventually] feature for the national team for the next decade,” Ramos told Goal.com.

Luckily for both the United States and Liverpool, Pelosi makes it pretty clear that he wants to be a part of the first team sooner than later. He is not interested in searching for a loan move to get extra playing time. He looks at the recent progress of Liverpool starlets Raheem Sterling and Suso and believes he can follow suit into Rodgers’ plans.

“Those players were training and playing with us on the reserves and it was just to great to see that you are on their level, you just have keep working hard every day,” Pelosi said. “It’s everyone’s dream to play for the first team.”

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COMMENT
By Ewan Roberts

Tottenham and Liverpool have enjoyed/endured opposing fortunes in recent years, as Spurs have climbed the table, the Reds have stuttered. Since finishing eighth and second respectively in the 2008-09 season, the dynamic of the fabled “Big Four” has shifted, and the Merseysiders have not placed higher than sixth while the Londoners have appeared in a Champions League quarter-final and finished fourth twice.

Now both sides have dispensed of their old school, veteran managers and brought in thirty-something head coaches whose philosophies are more continental and whose management styles were shaped by their time spent under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.

But the make-up of the two sides could have been vastly different had Harry Redknapp been appointed England boss, or if John Henry and Fenway Sports Group had opted for Roberto Martinez instead of Brendan Rodgers. Having also tussled for the signatures of Clint Dempsey and Gylfi Sigurdsson over the summer, Wednesday’s clash poses numerous questions of what might have been for both sides.

The White Hart Lane faithful could have been chanting Rodgers’ name, with the Northern Irishman having been sounded out by the Tottenham hierarchy as a potential replacement for Redknapp, the then bookie’s favourite for the England job; during his pre-match press conference, Rodgers intimated that contact had been made with the north London club, but evaded follow-up questions.

There is a sense that Rodgers might have been a better fit for Spurs than Andre Villas-Boas has so far proven to be. Tottenham are counterattack heavy now, and have averaged just 48% possession this year, down 8.7% on last season, whereas Rodgers has upped Liverpool’s ball retention by 0.8% to 56.3%, the fourth best in the league.

Liverpool have played on average 121 more short passes per game (35%) than Tottenham, though that is in no small part due to summer signing Joe Allen; the Welshman has averaged 69.4 passes per game, whereas Spurs’ best midfield passer, Mousa Dembele, averages just 44.5.

While Rodgers got his man in the form of Allen, Villas-Boas was deprived of number one target Joao Moutinho and Spurs’ ball retention has suffered in the wake of Luka Modric’s departure. You suspect that Rodgers, so keen to give youth a chance (from Andre Wisdom to Raheem Sterling to Suso) would have given more responsibility to the 20-year-old Tom Carroll, who has attempted 69.5 passes per game in his rare but promising outings in the Europa League.

It is unlikely Rodgers would have faced the vitriol that has greeted Villas-Boas either. Despite an occasionally unflattering documentary, Rodgers enjoys considerably more favour with supporters at Anfield – and, if reports are to be believed, his players – than Villas-Boas does at White Hart Lane.

A more affable, approachable manager, Rodgers’ reputation was on the rise thanks to an encouraging first season in the Premier League with Swansea, whereas the Portuguese joined Spurs as a failure, a Chelsea cast-off. He shares similarities with Redknapp too, particularly in terms of man-management, and would have provided a more familiar link between the old and new regimes.

Rodgers’ popularity and the success of his philosophy so far has, however, been propped up by Luis Suarez – who Tottenham and Redknapp passed on two years ago – who has scored or assisted 70% of Liverpool’s goals this year. Liverpool lack a foil for Suarez, someone to share the goalscoring burden, and their dependence on the Uruguayan would have been reduced had they managed to sign Sigurdsson or Dempsey.

Sigurdsson has made 11 appearances in the league this year for Tottenham (the majority off the bench) and has yet to record a single goal or assist. The Icelandic midfielder has looked a shadow of the player who carried Rodgers’ Swansea in the second half of the season, scoring or assisting 10 goals in 17 starts after arriving from Hoffenheim on loan.

Qualifying as a home-grown player, the Reading product was an opportunistic purchase made before Villas-Boas had been appointed, and he seems ill at ease with the Portuguese’s style. Short on confidence, his lack of mobility and pace is at odds with Spurs’ quick transition set-up and the speed merchants around him.

While Sigurdsson may regret spurning the chance to link up with Rodgers again, Dempsey is beginning to find his feet in north London. The American made a slow start to his Tottenham career, not helped by a non-existent pre-season, but has shown promise since his winning goal at Old Trafford. He gave his best performance in a Lilywhite shirt against West Ham, assisting Gareth Bale with a clever, dinked pass and rattling the crossbar.

Dempsey has admitted that he is struggled to adapt to the new central role given to him by Villas-Boas, with most of his best work at Fulham coming off the left flank. Had he moved to Merseyside, Rodgers would likely have deployed him on the familiar left wing, where the Anfield boss has instead been forced to field full-back Jose Enrique.

The Texan scored 17 goals last season (a goal every 2.1 games) and would have supplemented and relieved Suarez. In turn, the Uruguayan would likely have been a more selfless, creative foil than Jermain Defoe.

In a curious series of three-way love triangles, Tottenham and Liverpool have been batting their eyelashes at, and battling over, the same player and staff targets – a symptom perhaps of the lack of affordable high-end quality available to sides without Champions League football. And on Wednesday, all parties may be tempted to compare shades of grass and revaluate whether the choice they made was the right or wrong one.

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Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas believes that Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers is the man to bring Champions League football back to Anfield.

The Portuguese boss goes into the game against the Merseyside club knowing that a win can take the club into the top four, but, with their opponents currently on an eight-game unbeaten streak of their own, he remains wary of the threat that they pose.

“At the moment they [Liverpool] are on a good run in terms of form,” Villas-Boas told reporters.

“They would want ideally to turn the draws into wins. In a couple of games there were very close to winning but they didn’t get the result that they wanted.

“They are in an awkward position in the league at the moment but the distance between the teams [in the middle of the table] is not a lot so it can change dramatically for them and they can join the top ten very soon.

“The power of the club is extremely high and the quality of the players and I think eventually they will join the battle for the top spots.”

The 35-year-old is very familiar with former Swansea City manager Rodgers, after having worked as part of Jose Mourinho’s backroom staff at Chelsea together, and has admitted that he’s followed his career ever since.

He added: “The first time I came across Brendan was at an FA coaching course when we were trying to get our degrees and qualifications, we didn’t know that our ways would cross paths.

“I saw him again when we were at Chelsea in 2004, when he was there as a youth team coach and he had done really well since then.

“He started his career at the right time, went through a difficult period at Watford. He came strong at Reading and Swansea. [And now] he’s in a position which he deserves to be and he has a bright future.”