Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp is delighted that young defender Neco Williams has signed a new contract with The Reds, saying the Academy graduate “trained like a machine”.
Klopp was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com from the first-team’s training camp in Salzburg this week. When asked for his thoughts on the new deal for Williams, Klopp said:
“Great news. Great news for him, great news for us.
“I think Neco is – how young players are – they are kind of ‘projects’. I don’t want to use that word, but with my English I don’t have a better one. There is a lot of work to do, but there is already a lot of skills and potential there and that makes it so exciting.
“Neco from the first day he trained with us, he trained like a machine. Every day he became better and better and better and I thought, ‘OK, what’s that?!’ Unfortunately then, in the moment he started playing for us, I saw it, he got a little physical knock, like it was always really intense all of the time. But then he had to play.”
Klopp continued discussing Williams’ potential in glowing terms and seemed genuinely delighted he will get the chance to help the young right-back to realise his full potential at Anfield.
“… there is so much positivity about this kid that I am really happy we have him here. That’s very important for me because he is our boy and it is the perfect place for him in the moment because we don’t rush his career.
“We want to prepare him for his career, yes, and in his position in which he will probably play, there is a really, really good player in that position. But Trent cannot – and should not and never did – play 500 games a season, so we need to have options there. Neco is as close as possible for his age group.
“He has a lot of things that we really like, so I am really, really happy that he signed this contract.”
Williams is training with the first- team in Austria at the moment. He will be hoping to make the squad for the Community Shield clash with Arsenal at Wembley on Saturday, August 29th.
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