Picking himself up from the ground, Rhian Brewster looks across at his coach, and he winks. His baggy red shirt billows in the late-summer breeze, grass stains mark his shorts. He is seven years old and undersized, the smallest player on the pitch. Knocking him down isn’t too difficult; keeping him down is another matter. The wink is to show that he is not hurt, and that he won’t be discouraged. Moments later, Brewster is climbing to his feet again, but this time the crunching tackle was his own – retribution. He looks over to his coach once more. He winks.

At the same seven-a-side tournament in Woodford, Essex – only the second of its sort he’d ever played in – Brewster collected the ball from kick off, on the edge of his own penalty area, and ran. He ran through the opposition, from one end of the pitch to the other. The other boys his age were bigger and stronger, but there weren’t as quick, nor as preternaturally skilled. After he scored, he collected the ball from the net and jogged back to the centre, ready to go again.

In one afternoon, Brewster had demonstrated both the technical ability and the temperament that have driven him to where he is today, 12 years later: on the brink of a first-team breakthrough with Liverpool. And it is these same attributes that lead those around him to believe he will take the opportunities coming his way, and thrive under the spotlight about to be shone upon him.

Martin Taylor, who now works for Arsenal but was a Chelsea scout at the time, was stood at the touchline to witness the wink and the wonder-goal. He tuned to Dan Seymour, Brewster’s coach at Shield Academy, and said: “Who is that? I’ve got to have his details.”

“His desire to score goals, his movement on the pitch – he had it all,” Taylor tells LFC Stories. “He had natural ability – ability you can’t coach.”

A Charlton scout had already approached Brewster’s mother, Hulya, who was in attendance to support her son at the tournament, but his clinical, impersonal introduction was off-putting and given short shrift. Taylor had more luck, and within minutes Hulya was on the phone to Ian, Brewster’s father, who was 260 miles north, watching a test match between England and the West Indies at Chester-le-Street. After a few failed attempts, Hulya got through to her husband and persuaded him to take the Chelsea scout’s call.

“Your son is a special player,” Taylor told Ian.

******

Brewster grew up in east London – living first in Dagenham, then moving to Collier Row – with his mum, dad and younger sister, Jaylece. He has always enjoyed a close relationship with both parents, even after they separated when he was 12. Hulya, a hairdresser with her own business in Romford, has been a consistent presence at his matches, and Ian has always been close by to dispense advice, offer an understanding ear and, on the rare occasions it has been needed, keep his son’s feet on the ground. During school holidays, Brewster would sometimes accompany Ian, who is now a transport manager but was then a DHL delivery driver, on cross-country jobs – Ian had a novelty number plate made up especially for these occasions; it read: “Father & Son.”

And it was alongside his father that Brewster’s love of football blossomed as an infant. Ian, a Liverpool fan since the mid-80s thanks to an adulation of John Barnes, played semi-professionally, first as a right-back and latterly as a goalkeeper. Brewster would accompany his father to training sessions with Leyton County or Brimsdown Rovers, joining in with the warm-up exercises and kicking a ball around with his dad’s team-mates. On matchdays, he would stand behind Ian’s goal, supporting and studying.

Wherever Brewster went, so went his football; even at bedtime, he couldn’t be separated from his ball. His obsession was clear, but it wasn’t until a back-garden kickabout at their house In Dagenham when Brewster was nine – by which point he was already on Chelsea’s books – that Ian began to fully grasp just how special a talent his son possessed. “We were mucking around with a tennis ball,” Ian begins, “I was leaning on him and trash talking – “You can’t do anything to me; you can’t get past me.’”

The young Brewster rose to the challenge. He swivelled, pulled off a flip-flap – or elastico as it is also known – pushing the ball outward with the outside of his right foot, before flicking it back the other way in one swift movement, a trick popularised by Brazilian superstar Ronaldinho. “Flip-flap, boom!” Ian exclaims, remembering his astonishment as the tennis ball swooshed between his legs, his son running past him to collect it on the other side. Ian was so impressed he immediately phoned his friend Pete to tell him what Rhian had just done.

Attending Chadwell Heath Primary School, Brewster was never a disruptive student. But football monopolised his focus. Every lesson was a countdown to break time. He’d stare out the window and daydream about which classmates he’d dribble around on the playground, or how he could recreate the goals of his hero, Thierry Henry.

Brewster was first introduced to organised football and structured coaching shortly before he turned seven, joining the recently founded Shield Academy, who played in Essex’s Thundermite youth league. From the first training session, held at the sports hall of a local school and made up of children up as much as two or three years older than him as the club was still filling up its age groups, Brewster stood out.

(Image: Taylor/Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

“Rhian was head and shoulders above any other player that was there, and that’s inclusive of players who were quite significantly older,” Dan Seymour, co-founder of Shield Academy and Brewster’s first coach, tells LFC Stories. “Rhian just shone – he always shone.”

When Ian came to collect his son after the session, Seymour pulled him to one side – “What’s he done?” was Ian’s initial thought, assuming Rhian was in trouble. Seymour proceeded to explain what remarkable talent he’d seen in the young Brewster. “There was just something very different about Rhian,” he says.

Seymour describes the solo goal Brewster scored in his second tournament with Shield as the youngster’s “defining moment” at the club. He’d already impressed in training, league games and the previous tournament with his speed, skill and natural game intelligence. And the added incentive of a £5 reward for each goal he scored was quickly putting his dad out of pocket. But this goal set him apart from the other boys his age who were advanced of their peers. It marked him out as a young boy of the highest footballing potential. It sparked interest from Charlton, West Ham and Arsenal, and convinced Chelsea they had to sign him.

He was invited to train at Chelsea’s satellite centre in nearby Redbridge, one of 10 such schemes the club operated around the M25. There, they identified, inculcated and evaluated the best regional prospects, before moving the most outstanding of those over to their academy in Cobham. Brewster lasted just a handful of sessions at the Redbridge centre.

Michael Beale, who was Chelsea’s youth development officer at the time, was alerted to Brewster during an under-7s session he was running which brought together groups from the different development centres. “You don’t need to bring Rhian here any more,” he told Brewster’s dad, whose heart momentarily sank, thinking his son was about to be let go. Beale went on to explain that he deemed Rhian too good for Chelsea’s satellite programme, and instead asked that he be integrated into their group of elite prospects at the academy in Cobham.

Beale, who is now a first-team coach at Rangers, has remained close with the Brewsters ever since. He went on to play a key role in the young striker’s development at Chelsea and later Liverpool. “I first met him that night. He stood out straight away – a really infectious boy, even back then,” Beale says, remembering his initial impression of Brewster. “He was very quick. He was quite an excitable young boy, running around non-stop. Obviously his speed was very impressive, but it was his character that took your eye more than anything.”

Brewster joined Chelsea’s under-9s group at the Cobham academy, an hour-and-a-half’s drive west from the family home, following the M25 as it traced London’s belly. Ian – who’d often wear his Liverpool shirt to Cobham – and Hulya committed their evenings, three or four times a week, to the three-hour round trip, before Chelsea began to arrange Brewster’s transport to ease the burden on the family.

(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

During one pre-season trip to Cobham for a fixture against a visiting team from Holland, Brewster again managed to surprise his closest confident and most ardent cheerleader, his father, with his outrageous ability. Playing wide on the right, he’d been having an indifferent game – plenty of speed and energy, but struggling to assert himself. Ian, watching on, turned to his friend to suggest his son was looking a little out of sorts, frustrated.

Just then, the Dutch goalkeeper launched the ball from his hands, high into the west London sky. As it returned from orbit, Brewster moved beneath the dropping ball and killed it effortlessly, instantly bringing it under control. With his next move planned seconds in advance, he turned sharply and threaded an arrowed pass between defenders to put a team-mate clean through on goal.

Post-match debriefs in Dad’s Range Rover were commonplace – usually to discuss Brewster’s personal highlights and make sure he’d enjoyed himself. This time, as he sat in the middle back seat, still wearing his oversized blue Chelsea shirt, there was an added sincerity to his father’s tone. “Son, Daddy’s got something to tell you,” Ian began. “From this day forward, I will never doubt your ability again. I now realise the only thing that’s going to stop you from going to the top is your head. With your ability, anything you want to do, you can do.”

******

Even within Chelsea’s elite group, Brewster still appeared exceptional among his peers. A roundly liked character, effervescent and harmlessly cheeky, everyone enjoyed being around him, and he formed close bonds with fellow Chelsea starlets Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James, Tariq Uwakwe and Martell Taylor-Crossdale, all of whom number among his closest friends to this day.

But seeds of doubt began to be sown in the young forward’s mind when he’d learn of the latest Chelsea hopeful to be released – “He’s good, though!” he’d say, and wonder about his own prospects. He started to question whether, despite his status as one of the country’s brightest talents, a pathway to the first team existed.

“I don’t think he’d have gone as far with Chelsea as he has with Liverpool,” says Taylor. “I saw him in the academy, and they used to isolate him wide-right or wide-left. He was never getting the ball. He was coming inside. I think it was inevitable that he switched clubs and went to Liverpool, and he’s gone from strength to strength.”

“There was a point that Rhian decided Chelsea wasn’t the right move any more,” Seymour adds. “He looked at the academy and wondered whether he would be afforded the opportunities going towards the first team that he would be afforded somewhere else. He wanted to give himself the best opportunity to break towards first-team football in the future.”

At 14, Brewster decided not to renew his registration with Chelsea and explore scholarship opportunities elsewhere. Already a prospect of national renown, he effectively had his pick of the country’s Category One academies, whose recruitment is unrestricted by catchment areas.

It has been suggested that Brewster’s move to Liverpool was inevitable, given his father’s affection for the club and the fact Beale, with whom he’d been close at Chelsea, had taken up a position within the Merseyside club’s academy. But everyone around Brewster insists the young player’s decision to join the Reds was entirely his own, that his dad’s fandom was not a factor, while Beale was coaching in Brazil at the time.

Ian initially made the move north with his son, although they lived separately; Brewster stayed with the same host family who’d welcomed Raheem Sterling to Liverpool from London at the same age. Before Christmas in 2015, Hulya and Jaylece left the capital for Merseyside, and Brewster moved in with his mum and sister. This arrangement lasted a year, until Hulya and Jaylece returned to London and Brewster moved in with his current hosts – he is only now on the lookout for a place of his own in the city.

The decision to leave his home, his friends and his family to move 200 miles north can’t have been an easy one for the 14-year-old Brewster to make. But of all the factors he weighed up, money, his father insists, was not one of them; offers more lucrative than Liverpool’s were shunned. “I gave him a scenario,” Ian says, remembering a conversation with his son that illustrated an indifference toward the financial rewards football offers. “I said, ‘If I gave you 20 grand to stay at Chelsea, or ten grand to go to Reading but you’ll play every week, what would you do?’ He said, ‘I’d go to Reading, Dad.’ I tried to call his bluff: ‘You’d go to Reading when you could be getting 20 grand at Chelsea? Why would you do that?’ He said, ‘Because I’d be playing every week in front of thousands of people.’”

(Image: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

What most attracted Brewster to Liverpool was the club’s philosophy of prizing the individual’s development over that of the collective at youth level, with each player working to a bespoke programme tailored to their specific needs. For Brewster, this included one-on-one sessions with club legends such as Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler and Steve Heighway, and selection for the Talent Group, a programme overseen by then-first-team development coach Pep Lijnders and academy manager Alex Inglethorpe, exposing the club’s brightest youngsters to first-team training sessions at Melwood on a weekly basis.

“Liverpool has shown over the last five, six seven years, the opportunities for young players, compared to some other clubs, are extremely high,” said Beale, who oversaw 18 players’ progression into the first-team environment during his time as Liverpool’s under-23s manager. “I think that was a big pull for him, and the fact that the academy’s work is based very much on the individual, as opposed to the team – there’s a lot of work that goes into the individual, bespoke work.”

At youth level, Liverpool invest in the person, as well as the player. Boys in the academy take turns volunteering at local homeless shelters, serving food, scrubbing toilets and cleaning kitchens. Brewster was no different – his turn came after he returned from scoring five goals in three games, including a hat-trick against the hosts, for the England under-17s at the 2016 Croatia Cup. There was no time for the ego to swell.

Already a regular in Liverpool’s under-18s side, at 16 Brewster scored a hat-trick in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Accrington and made a scoring debut, versus Ipswich Town, for the under-23s. Liverpool’s personal touch was paying dividends, quickening the gifted striker’s development to the point he was deemed ready to experience a Premier League matchday, named among the substitutes as Liverpool lost 2-1 to Crystal Palace at Anfield in April 2017, less than three weeks after his 17thbirthday.

By the end of the year, Brewster was a world champion, the top scorer as England won the FIFA U-17 World Cup in India. Hulya and Jaylece flew out to support him during the later stages of the tournament, battling flight delays and making a mad dash through the airport to arrive just in time to catch the semi-final victory over Brazil. Liverpool’s academy staff stopped their work and gathered around a television to cheer Brewster on as England overcame Spain in the final. In scoring the first goal in a 5-2 win, taking his tally for the tournament to eight, Brewster led the Young Lions to avenge a shootout loss to the Spaniards – in which he’d missed his spot kick – in the final of the European Championships earlier in the year.

Ian was on holiday in Atlanta during the tournament, but he remained in regular contact with Brewster via phone calls and FaceTime. With just one goal to his name through the group stage and yet to impose himself to his full capability, the Liverpool striker was in danger allowing the competition to pass him by. After England edged out Japan on penalties in the round of 16, Dad was on hand for a frank pep talk: “Don’t you think it’s time you joined the party?” Brewster scored back-to-back hat-tricks against the USA and Brazil in the next two games. Along with Manchester City’s Phil Foden and former Chelsea colleague Hudson-Odoi, he was hailed as the star of an exciting new generation of English players.

(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Media interest in England’s all-conquering youngsters has been high ever since their success at the U-17 World Cup. In his first interview with a major national outlet, Brewster decided to use the fresh attention he was receiving to highlight an issue many his age would be uncomfortable speaking publicly about. In his interview with The Guardian , he discussed how he’d been the victim of racial abuse on the pitch seven times already in his career.

Brewster’s determination to speak out on such an evocative issue is indicative of a conscientiousness his mum and dad have always encouraged. “Both parents have been absolutely instrumental,” says Seymour. “You can see the grounding Rhian had as a child. Even when he first signed at Chelsea, both Ian and Hulya were very clear that if homework wasn’t done, don’t expect to train. It’s those things that kept him very grounded, and reminded him of the fact that this is a privilege, not a right.”

On the pitch, he has never been nervous, nor awed by reputation. “He doesn’t care who he’s up against,” Ian says. “He respects you, but he won’t do anything different, whether it’s a Sunday League game or the Champions League. He’ll do the unexpected.”

Away from the field, though, Brewster would never seek to flaunt his talent or status. Wearing the garbs of a professional club can be intoxicating for young players within academies, imbued too soon with an inflated sense of achievement. Not Brewster. The first thing he’d always do when he got home from one of those long trips to Cobham was change out of his Chelsea kit before anyone saw him. “If you didn’t talk to him about playing for Chelsea,” Ian says, “he wouldn’t talk about it.”

******

Watching England colleagues such as Foden, Jadon Sancho, Hudson-Odoi and Morgan Gibbs-White enjoy breakthrough campaigns at senior level last season wasn’t easy for Brewster. On 12 January last year, in an under-23s game against Manchester City, he landed awkwardly after contesting an aerial challenge. The incident looked innocuous, but the prognosis was ankle ligament damage serious enough to require surgery, ending his season there and then. It was later discovered that he’d also sustained meniscus damage, leading to a second operation in March.

Sidelined for 15 months – a period in which he otherwise surely would have earned a competitive senior debut – Brewster’s rehabilitation was overseen at Liverpool’s first-team training ground at Melwood, rather than at the academy facility in Kirkby, at the insistence of manager Jurgen Klopp. It was a show of faith Brewster is eager to repay.

And it was during the gruelling hours of painful rehab exercises that Brewster grew close with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – whom he refers to as his “big bro” – as the England midfielder worked his way back from a serious cruciate ligament injury.

Klopp’s confidence and Oxlade-Chamberlain’s companionship helped the 19-year-old remain positive and steadfast throughout his recovery; if he ever allowed doubt to occupy his mind, it certainly didn’t show. “Rhian doesn’t do drama,” Ian says of his son’s mind-set in dealing with his first major setback. “He’s very steely-eyed, very focused.”

Brewster signed his first professional contract while he was out injured, rejecting an approach from Borussia Monchengladbach which so angered Liverpool that they cancelled a proposed friendly with the Bundesliga side. “Rhian is loyal,” Ian says of the striker’s decision to commit to the Reds. “He hasn’t forgotten how Liverpool have treated him.”

Having showed no ill effects from the ankle and knee surgeries upon his return to under-23 action, Brewster was selected to be a substitute in the second leg of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final against Barcelona in May. Faced with a 3-0 deficit from the first leg, the young striker was told he stood a good chance of getting on for a few minutes in the Anfield return; had he Reds not mounted their miraculous comeback, Klopp likely would have handed Brewster a debut in the game. “I’m disappointed not to have played,” he told his dad after the match, “but this is bigger than me.”

In the squad again for the final, Brewster knew his selection this time was ceremonial, a close-up view of the occasions he’ll be central to in the future. “If I know my son, as much as he’s got that medal, he will still feel a bit empty about it because he didn’t play,” Ian says. “However, he’s excited that his mates and Liverpool as a club have won the European Cup final. That’s Rhian. No one more than Rhian is going to want to get back there again this year.”

(Image: Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

The 19-year-old forward has had a taste of senior action during pre-season, scoring twice against Tranmere, once against Bradford City and finding the top corner with a precise penalty versus Borussia Dortmund. Liverpool’s senior players have been impressed by Brewster’s showing since his return from injury, too, with captain Jordan Henderson privately eulogising about the teenager’s confidence, and Naby Keita among those awed by his speed and skill.

Sources within the club preach caution when asked about Brewster’s prospects for the upcoming season, insisting that, while an exceptional talent, there is still plenty of work to be done before he can establish himself within the Liverpool first team. But they also confirm that the opportunity to do so awaits the young striker – Daniel Sturridge has left the club, and a replacement has not been sought in order to protect Brewster’s pathway.

“This is a player Jurgen Klopp has been invested in for a good few years now,” says Beale. “It’s not just happened over night. He has an opportunity to show Jurgen what he can do. And Jurgen, ultimately, wants to give him that opportunity, so what a fantastic position for a young player to be in."

His name may have resounded in footballing circles for years now, but Brewster is yet to experience the intensity of attention and scrutiny that will accompany his inevitable first-team progression. Everyone who has worked with him points to his confidence, humility and strength of character as traits that will serve him well under the spotlight’s glare.

Above all, though, Brewster is supremely ambitious. Dating back to his earliest Chelsea years, he has set goals for himself – from seasonal scoring targets to a timeline for England caps. Injury has meant he’s had to wait longer than expected, but he will soon tick off his first major milestone. After that, his long-term aim is clear: “I want be a Liverpool legend,” he has confided to those closest to him.

Brewster doesn’t just want a place in the team; he wants a place in history.