French starlet, Billy Koumetio’s progress has caught the eye of a number of people in the Liverpool FC backroom staff, with one among them being Jurgen Klopp. The Reds boss has been left impressed by the maturity of play shown by the 17-year old center-back in training alongside the Anfield outfit’s first-team squad.
Koumetio is a part of the Liverpool FC squad that was in Austria as of recently due to the club’s pre-season training camp. The player traveled with Klopp’s senior squad due to a current shortage of center-back options at Klopp’s disposal.
With Dejan Lovren’s exit last month and Joel Matip’s road to recovery looking rather bleak, only Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez remained the first-team center-backs for the Reds. As a result, Klopp decided to include Koumetio in the clubs’ Austria tour rather than leave the youngster for Liverpool FC U23’s season preparations.
And the German coach has spoken about how he has made sure that the 17-year old defender is slowly but steadily integrated into the training efforts of the Reds’ squad.
“The perfect situation would be that he maybe really first be with the U23s and stuff like this,” said Klopp. “But a training camp is a nice opportunity for him, it’s good for us to see him.
“I took him [Sunday] morning in a session because we have to make sure we don’t over-do [it] with him.”
“I think things like this help him a lot and I’m pretty sure he will make big steps. We just have to make sure that we really deal with his age group and physical demands well.”
The France U18 international’s future in the Liverpool FC shirt looks highly promising if we are to go by anything Klopp says. Maybe, Koumetio has it in himself to emulate the success shown by his idol Virgil van Dijk on the pitch and become a star man for the Merseyside giants in the coming years.
