I posted it in this thread before Doc! But he stole all the likes 😭
Rio
- Thread starter Dreambeliever
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Can you post it here? Interesting to know that.
It was a long conversation about being a bus driver (i.e. Curry, Jordan etc) or those who just ride on the bus ... harsh on Durant as he was brilliant in two finals against Cavs but there's players who are leaders and will take control of teams, and then there's the rest of the players - among them many greats.
This is the angle I had with my two boys. Little did they know they were witnessing the start of greatness for their first game.
It's all about timing Froggy, all about the timing.
Ahhh, complacency Froggy, ya wee dick.
Prepare to be disappointed
View: https://x.com/michael_reid11/status/1960088669554897261
View: https://x.com/LewisBower2021/status/1960087897685569659
View: https://x.com/JeremieFrimpong/status/1960087883047669770
View: https://x.com/bytsd29476/status/1960092603933966549
View: https://x.com/cnsultra/status/1960128553338486865
View: https://x.com/_pauljoyce/status/1960088628626956648
It is ironic given all the young wingers that Chelsea have signed in recent seasons, from Estêvão Willian to Kendry Páez and Geovany Quenda, that the one who got away continues to weigh heavily on their minds.
When Liverpool poached the 16-year-old Rio Ngumoha in September last year, the reaction of their Premier League rivals was one of thinly veiled anger.
So much so that for a spell, Liverpool’s scouts were banned from attending matches at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground in an act of retaliation.
The sight of Ngumoha announcing himself to a wider public with a goal in an effervescent cameo in Liverpool’s 3-1 win over Yokohama F Marinos on Wednesday would not have come as a surprise to anyone at his former club.
That the left winger, who does not turn 17 until the end of next month, chose the very day Luis Díaz checked out of Anfield — after his £65.5million move to Bayern Munich — to leave an indelible mark on the game showed he is blessed with the art of timing.
However, it is his ability to ghost beyond rivals that has created a buzz among his team-mates, with Mohamed Salah breaking into a smile when Ngumoha scored the third goal to ensure that the club’s tour to the Far East ended on a positive note.
The goal came after Ngumoha led a six-on-three counterattack and, despite having senior players in support, at no point did he consider passing as he casually turned an opponent inside and out before dispatching an accomplished finish.
In a previous attack, Arne Slot, the Liverpool head coach, thought that Ngumoha should have squared a ball to Curtis Jones and used this as evidence that the youngster still needs to learn.
“But if you are 16 and you can impact games like he did, that is definitely a compliment,” Slot said.
The Liverpool legend Ian Rush was present in Japan and suggested that Ngumoha could be an option as a substitute this season, claiming he can “come on and make a difference”. After another favourable impression in the loss to AC Milan last Saturday, Harvey Elliott, who knows a thing or two about dealing with the spotlight at a young age, described his team-mate as “fearless” and stressed he had an “amazing future” ahead of him.
What is clear is that Ngumoha has made rapid strides already.
Chelsea’s temporary ban on Liverpool’s scouts missed the point. The move was passed by the Premier League and it is understood that it was the clear pathway at Liverpool into the first team set-up that appealed to Ngumoha.
He had trained under the former Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino on more than one occasion, but the constant stream of new signings at the club clouded the picture.
At Liverpool, he initially joined the Under-18 side, where he found opponents would routinely double up on him, before advancing to the Under-21 team. In between, Ngumoha made his senior debut when picked to start in Liverpool’s 4-0 FA Cup third-round victory over Accrington Stanley.
One of the most pleasing aspects of this latest 26-minute run-out, which came when he replaced Cody Gakpo, would have been his goal.
The former Liverpool Under-21 coach Barry Lewtas worked on Ngumoha’s end product in the final months of the season as the point was hammered home that for all his impressive one-on-one ability and close skill, it needed to benefit the team.
The manner in which he has attacked pre-season suggests that the penny has dropped and further minutes are anticipated against Athletic Bilbao at Anfield next Monday for a talent who can sign a professional deal on his 17th birthday.
At Chelsea, they know all about the potential.
After all, when Ngumoha’s move was confirmed, the former captain John Terry made his feelings clear on social media: “This boy is — and will be — a top, top player.”
View: https://x.com/MirrorFootball/status/1960207888468611130
looks like LFC was his boyhood club
View: https://x.com/pokonyaaaang/status/1960494168477966689/photo/1
View: https://x.com/pokonyaaaang/status/1960494168477966689/photo/1
How ‘back post’ Liverpool regime created Rio Ngumoha’s magic moment
The teenager’s dramatic winner against Newcastle showcased the talent that Anfield club knew he had when signing him from Chelsea, a transfer which will result in a tribunal
www.thetimes.com
The moment Rio Ngumoha’s first shot as Premier League footballer nestled in the back of the Newcastle United net did not just spark frenzied celebrations with his team-mates in a corner of Tyneside.
Back on Merseyside, those who worked with the 16-year-old after he joined Liverpool’s academy last season would have leapt out of their armchairs at the sight of the left winger announcing himself as the club’s youngest-ever goalscorer.
The scene in a hotel room in Rome was similarly euphoric. Barry Lewtas is in Italy at present coaching England Under-16, having left his role in charge of Liverpool’s under-21s in the summer. Yet Ngumoha’s 100th-minute winner at St James’ Park transported him back to the training pitches at the club’s Kirkby headquarters, where hours were spent encouraging the prodigy to take up the very position from which he scored.
“A lot of our work last year was trying to get Rio inside the back post when the ball was getting crossed on the other side,” Lewtas said. “So when I was watching the game over here, it was like it went in in slow motion for me. I jumped on the WhatsApp group I’m still in with Jay Spearing and Jacob Dunne-Simon, who is an analyst at the academy, and said, ‘Fair play! In the big moment, he got in there and he stuck it away.’ It was brilliant to see that.”
In an interview published on Liverpool’s website after a dramatic top-flight debut, Ngumoha recalled how his coaches would demand, “make the back post, make the back post” in an attempt to refine the teenager’s craft.
When Dominik Szoboszlai dummied the ball for the goal, it was not because he had scanned and spotted the youngster. Rather, he reckoned that is where Ngumoha should have been if he had been listening during training.
That he was in position, and proceeded to apply an emphatic finish, speaks to the size of a talent recruited amid much acrimony from Chelsea 12 months ago. The ill-feeling was such that Liverpool’s scouts were briefly banned from attending youth games at their rivals’ Cobham facility after luring Ngumoha to Anfield with the promise of a pathway into the first team.
Liverpool’s commitment is such that links with Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League winner Bradley Barcola and Malick Fofana, Lyon’s exciting talent, in recent weeks have been instantly played down due to Ngumoha’s eye-catching progress.
Chelsea will be due compensation for a player they picked up at the age of eight, but with the two clubs at loggerheads that figure will be determined by a Professional Football Compensation Committee, which could meet before the end of September. Both clubs will submit evidence beforehand and witnesses can be cross-examined during the hearing.
A similar tribunal that sat when Liverpool took Harvey Elliott from Fulham in 2019 ruled in February 2021 that they should pay £1.5million, plus £2.8million in possible add-ons, which was a record figure. However, Elliott had already made three first team appearances by then.
Ngumoha initially played for Liverpool Under-18 and in the Uefa Youth League before finishing the season with the under-21s, when the emphasis was on improving the output of a player who oozed potential but did not necessarily stand out.
“There was a lot of noise around his signing, but you quickly realise that you’ve got a 16-year-old on your hands,” Lewtas said. “He’s a lovely kid. Polite. He’s been brought up really well and he wants to do well.
“There was one moment in an early training session where Rio picked up the ball and he beat a couple of the lads — I don’t want to say how many, but it was quite a few to be fair — and the staff looked at each other as if to say, ‘OK!’
“From there, you are trying to find a few areas where you can make a bit of an impact and add to his game. Obviously a big one was trying to maybe up his numbers a little bit. And one of them was kind of getting inside the second post when the ball was coming from the other side.
“That sounds quite straightforward, but it can be difficult as well. He’s really open to improvement and he’s living out his dreams at the minute. It’s lovely to see.”
Working with Arne Slot’s first-team squad last term and especially during pre-season, when Ngumoha took another step forward, has aided his development.
On Tuesday, he was back in training, where the Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk was ready to offer all the advice needed to help ensure an upward trajectory continues to be plotted.
“If you make your Premier League debut at 16, scoring the winner, then that is a great sign of quality and being a special talent,” Van Dijk said. “But I also know you have to take it game by game. It should motivate him even more to keep working each and every day and stay humble.
“He is in a good environment to progress. He has to look after himself and he has to learn from all of us who have been playing for so many years at the highest level, and take it on board and progress. That is a good target for him.
“It starts with mentality, of course. You have to have the right mindset. Nowadays, if you are a football player of the highest level, it takes much more than just playing on the pitch.
“You have to deal with a lot of things off the pitch as well. Mentally, physically, there are a lot of games. But it is a good start from him. He has to have the motivation to keep working and, hopefully, he will have a fantastic career.”
Before Liverpool headed home on Monday night, Ngumoha found Dan Burn, the Newcastle defender, making a beeline for him. Despite the pain of defeat, Burn was gracious, congratulating his rival and urging him to enjoy the moment. That will not have been difficult for someone who is only eligible to sign a three-year professional deal when he turns 17 on Friday.
On Sunday, Ngumoha will come up against Arsenal’s Max Dowman, who is only 15 and made his Premier League debut last weekend.
It is a young man’s game and Ngumoha is not just a trailblazer, but also a role model.
There was only one topic of conversation when Lewtas, who is also working with England Under-20 in the coming months, addressed his squad of players on Tuesday.
“Rio’s impact is a really good one for me because he’s done this camp that I’m on with England at the minute,” he added. “So we actually mentioned him in the meeting this morning to this group of England under-16s, saying: ‘Look, the game can move quite quickly. Rio was in your boots a year or so ago. And now he’s made an impression on the first team at Liverpool.’
“Without him realising it, he’s become a real kind of a motivator for a lot of young, talented English players.”
This is interesting from Paul Joyce. They appear to have worked with Ngumoha on assuming "inside the back post positions" as the play progresses on the other side. Benitez was also pretty huge on this stuff. Benitez had a great impact on Torres and made him into the most coveted striker in world football while at Liverpool. One thing Benitez kept telling Torres was to assume certain positions at certain times/segments of the game.
Link: https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/rio-ngumoha-liverpool-tribunal-chelsea-m5vfq686m
I'm not a judgemental guy. Whatever gets you though the night Nomad.
A rebot?
Quiffbot?
Revealed: The secret side of Arne Slot that no one has seen before
Arne Slot is a football coach that has been labelled as a modern distillation of his illustrious compatriots Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff, to name just two - but he is also a human being.
Rio’s real wage revealed
Happy birthday to Rio Ngumoha, who turns 17 tomorrow – and is set to be rewarded with his first professional contract at Liverpool.
Ngumoha has been in the spotlight this week after his heroic last-minute winner at Newcastle on Monday and there were some suggestions that Liverpool broke their payment structure to sign the 16-year-old this time last year from Chelsea.
To be clear, any player signed at that age automatically goes on to a scholar’s contract, and Confidential understands that any notion Liverpool broke strategy to sign Ngumoha is 100 per cent false. The club are understood to be keen that their stars of the future are motivated by the pathway and opportunities at that age, not money.
A year on, though, Ngumoha is in line for his first professional contract. Again, though, the Premier League champions will not be ripping up any financial policies they have about players of this age, even though many people in the building believe he is their best academy asset for years.
At the moment, it is said that Ngumoha is paid roughly £300 a week. When he signs his first professional contract in the coming days or weeks, that will rise – but he still will be earning a modest wage that insiders say could be worth around £1,000 a week.
Remember that academy director Alex Inglethorpe introduced a wage cap of just over £50,000 a year as well as banning cars with an engine above 1.3litres.
Something to bear in mind for Ngumoha, who can tomorrow legally take driving lessons. After sealing three points for Liverpool on Tyneside, how are his three-point turns?
Revealed: The secret side of Arne Slot that no one has seen before
Arne Slot is a football coach that has been labelled as a modern distillation of his illustrious compatriots Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff, to name just two - but he is also a human being.www.dailymail.co.uk
Rio’s real wage revealed
Happy birthday to Rio Ngumoha, who turns 17 tomorrow – and is set to be rewarded with his first professional contract at Liverpool.
Ngumoha has been in the spotlight this week after his heroic last-minute winner at Newcastle on Monday and there were some suggestions that Liverpool broke their payment structure to sign the 16-year-old this time last year from Chelsea.
To be clear, any player signed at that age automatically goes on to a scholar’s contract, and Confidential understands that any notion Liverpool broke strategy to sign Ngumoha is 100 per cent false. The club are understood to be keen that their stars of the future are motivated by the pathway and opportunities at that age, not money.
A year on, though, Ngumoha is in line for his first professional contract. Again, though, the Premier League champions will not be ripping up any financial policies they have about players of this age, even though many people in the building believe he is their best academy asset for years.
At the moment, it is said that Ngumoha is paid roughly £300 a week. When he signs his first professional contract in the coming days or weeks, that will rise – but he still will be earning a modest wage that insiders say could be worth around £1,000 a week.
Remember that academy director Alex Inglethorpe introduced a wage cap of just over £50,000 a year as well as banning cars with an engine above 1.3litres.
Something to bear in mind for Ngumoha, who can tomorrow legally take driving lessons. After sealing three points for Liverpool on Tyneside, how are his three-point turns?
Not sure that applies to those listed on the first team.
I can imagine a heavily incentivised contract that escalates each year though.
There's just no way that the agent of the hottest young prospect in England will allow his client to sign $1K per week in wages when he could negotiate something with an extra zero (at least) at another club.
That wasn't an "epic" goal. Not at all. That was a neat finish.
Personally, I don't think Nguhoma has it in his locker to score "epic" goals. Has Sterling ever scored "an epic" goal? I don't think so.
ps Epic is from the word epoch which refers to a "period of time." So that such a goal should mark a time period.
Given the context of the game, and the fact every outfield player played a part, it was fucking epic. Even a bot can see that!
That wasn't an "epic" goal. Not at all. That was a neat finish.
Personally, I don't think Nguhoma has it in his locker to score "epic" goals.
I am in a massive internal conflict. I have never ignored anyone, but this is grinding my gears. Please ban him so I don't have to break the habit of a lifetime 🙏
That wasn't an "epic" goal. Not at all. That was a neat finish.
Personally, I don't think Nguhoma has it in his locker to score "epic" goals. Has Sterling ever scored "an epic" goal? I don't think so.
ps Epic is from the word epoch which refers to a "period of time." So that such a goal should mark a time period.
Im happy to go with democracy here tbh
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