A favorite maxim from me whenever I write about the Academy is: “progress matters more than wins.” And, well, it won’t take too long to sort out why I decided to lead this article with that tidbit: [the Liverpool U18s lost in the “baby” Merseyside Derby against the Everton U18s](https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/u18s-match-report-liverpool-suffer-late-defeat-everton-mini-derby), 2-1.
It wasn’t a great day for the Reds and, perhaps in grimly hilarious fashion, the young Reds seemed to take a page out of the Senior squad’s playbook by causing their own downfall through an own goal conceded as the opener. Liverpool and making things tougher for themselves; name a more iconic duo.
Despite an equalizer for the Reds via La’more Lee Forrester, they weren’t able to salvage the point as Everton managed the winner late in the match. I guess, Liverpool and dropping points at the death might be a more iconic duo, now that I think of it.
But, like I mentioned at the top of the article, youth development is often not about wins. The cliche “progress isn’t linear” exists for a reason. And when looking at the developing of skills and technique for players, that translates to necessarily needing to accept more inconsistency and some variance in results in order to foster an environment where youth can feel supported to implement what they’ve learned. Which is to say that progress on the pitch can look like a player taking the feedback that holding the ball for a smidge longer might give them a better chance to survey the field and pick-out a killer pass, by being caught on the ball by a defender 4 times more than usual, but then also managing 3 more key progressive passes.
No way to know in which direction the experiences of this match will go for each of the Academy players that participated, but there’s likely things the coaching staff will take back in order for them to work on this week. Here’s hoping that some of those players, including the likes of highly-touted prospect Josh Sonni-Lambie, are able to take in the feedback and show some progress in the next match.
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