“We went to the Barcelona game and after the third and fourth goal the atmosphere was indescribable. I came away from that game feeling like I’d been a Liverpool fan my whole life. Just to know you’re part of that club is incredible,” says Amy Rodgers. “The dream would be to have a night like that ourself, to have people singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ that loud would be amazing.”

After that game, Rodgers, a Celtic fan through her Scottish mother, was on a mission to get to Madrid. When herself and Liverpool teammate Niamh Charles got tickets, they headed to the Champions League final wearing their own shirts and mingled among the rest of the Liverpool fans, keeping quiet on they fact the play for the club.

“The experience was unbelievable,” says the 19-year-old. “Just being in Madrid before the game, the amount of fans there, Liverpool shirts everywhere. And you run into random people through the day who you knew. The atmosphere. I was so lucky to get a ticket. It makes you want to get to games that people want to watch and to want to win things as well.

“I wore my Rodgers shirt, me and Niamh Charles were there: ‘Rodgers’ and ‘Charles’ across our backs and Avon across the front. People kept asking: ‘Where did you get that shirt?’ I don’t think we told them because we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves.“

While the men’s team is going through a renaissance under Jürgen Klopp, in the background, the women’s team is gradually embarking on one of its own. Liverpool women have a potted recent history. With Matt Beard at the helm (now West Ham manager) and a push of support from the club, the Merseysiders became the team to topple Arsenal. Not only did they end the Gunners nine consecutive seasons at the top, they won the Women’s Super League back to back.

But then they slipped away from the pack. An apparent disinterest in the women’s team from the club’s hierarchy ensued – throwing away the hard work that have driven them to the top. It culminated in an exodus of players at the end of the 2017-18 season and the arrival of Neil Redfearn and then his exit one game into the season because of frustrations with the situation behind the scenes.

Liverpool women manager Vicky Jepson gives the final team talk before their game against the Metropolitan All Stars in in Boston, Massachusetts in July 2019. Photograph: Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images

Vicky Jepson stepped up from assistant manager following the less than ideal start to the season and the club have not looked back. Travelling with the men’s side on their preseason tour of the US and with revamped dressing rooms, change is seemingly afoot.

And Rodgers, who stepped up to the first team in 2017, is excited about the new atmosphere on Merseyside. “A couple of years ago Liverpool were one of the first sides to sort of go professional and they took strides forward like that. Hopefully, this can be another big year for us.

“We’ve added depth. Mel Lawley – she gets the ball, dribbles at you and you can’t get the ball off her. I can’t keep up with her but some of the others can. Mel’s a great attacking threat. And Jade Bailey can pass the ball for days and you can’t get near her because she’ll just pass the ball away, hopefully we can do much better this year.”

It is also exciting for Rodgers to be working under Jepson, who has nurtured her career. “Vicky coached me at Cheshire when I was about 15 and obviously I had her at Liverpool Development and when she became first team manager I was really excited because she puts trust in young players. You want to know that your coach believes in you.”

Amy Rodgers of Liverpool slides in to score the third goal in their 3-1 win over Everton Ladies in their WSL match at Prenton Park in May 2019. Photograph: Paul Currie for The FA/Shutterstock

Rodgers balances professionalism with studying for a degree in psychology at the university of Liverpool and benefits from an FA grant to do so. Going into year two, she expects the work to increase but it’s important she has options beyond the pitch. “That’s always been the plan, I’d like to be a psychologist when I finish playing,” she says. “My dissertation may be linked to sport so maybe I can do mental health in sports. We have a psychologist when we are away with England and the role they play is interesting. I was thinking I want to be a psychologist as well.”

Does it give her an edge? “The main thing for me is it that I’m quite understanding of other people, I understand why they interact in a team, the way they do,” she says.

Having switched from the blue half of Liverpool to red, at youth level, it was when she was at Everton that she first thought she could possibly make a career out of the game. Now she is playing alongside and against players that coached her and she grew up watching.

“When I first joined Everton, Fara Williams coached me, which was quite funny. She would join in the session and if she wanted the ball, she’d just push you over and then it would be your fault that you lost the ball. So there was Fara, Jill Scott, Alex Greenwood, Toni Duggan, most of the England were team were at Everton at some point so it was pretty amazing to think I used to go and watch most of them play and think I want to be on the pitch like that one day.”