Milos Kerkez improves Liverpool significantly
A new left back making a title-winning team much better? I believe so.
It’s the summer of full backs where Liverpool are concerned. First there was the overly self-indulgent ‘Summer of 66’ farewell party for El Trent, lavishly complete with BBQs, live music, flamethrowers and theme-branded cupcakes. Perhaps Verano del sesenta y seis would have been more fitting.
More importantly, Jeremie Frimpong was astonishingly snapped up for a lower fee than Jarell Quansah’s sale. The former Invincible Bundesliga champion boasted some of the greatest post-signing announcement media that we’ve potentially ever seen.
Frimpong had his Liverpool-mad dad totally in the dark, brushing off the rumours with a cool, “It’s not true, Dad,” even as the ink was practically hovering over the contract. But once the secret couldn’t hold any longer, he heartwarmingly dropped the news in a family group voice note “I’m coming to Liverpool. I’m going to play for Liverpool. I’m really excited and I know you guys are going to be excited for me… Now all you guys can come to every match, you don’t have to watch it on the TV!”
Atlético Madrid remain confident of tempting the Reds’s third-longest-serving player, Andy Robertson, in a move abroad. Kostas Tsimikas’s suitcase might as well be packed and his house whacked on Rightmove, at this point.
Milos Kerkez is now through the door, becoming the world’s fifth most expensive left-back of all time in a £40m deal. Before this summer, crazily, the club’s record signing at full back was Glen Johnson’s £17.5m switch from Portsmouth in 2009. That’s been obliterated twice this month alone.
I recently read Jonathan Wilson’s superb book on Hungarian football entitled The Names Heard Long Ago. Wilson depicts the Hungarian style of football as fluid, cerebral, and expressive, shaped by Jewish intellectuals and coffeehouse culture, and later exported across Europe by émigré coaches fleeing fascism. He frames Hungary’s historical influence as a revolution in football thought, one that laid the groundwork for the likes of Total Football and the modern pressing game.
Interestingly, I think that ‘fluid’, ‘cerebral’ and ‘expressive’ are three very applicable adjectives for Liverpool’s new man. There are no better attributive words than ‘confident’ to describe Milos Kerkez, though. One scroll of his Twitter account will confirm that pretty quickly.
In the majority of data metrics, for positional mates in the Premier League, he’s not wrong! I’m not sure if it’s possible to label a £40m left back signing from Bournemouth as a ‘good deal’, but Milos is operating another level to most other traditional left backs in Europe at the moment. And he’s 21.
Robertson, in his pomp, was defined by his ability to repeatedly put the ball on a plate for Salah and Mane in the opposition penalty box. In the two seasons where Liverpool won the Champions League then the Premier League, he was firing off double-digit crosses per match, many of them low and whipped with venom, and registering tremendous assist and expected assist figures through sheer volume and persistence rather than any intricate interplay.
This isn’t overly dissimilar to Milos Kerkez, though it would be doing him a disservice to claim that he’s not a precise crosser. Just look at his assist away at Tottenham! Besides, his crossing accuracy figure of 27.5% last season remains higher than some of the league’s other leading full backs including: Alexander-Arnold, Aina, Cucurella, Ait-Nouri, Robinson and Gvardiol.
No full back in the top 5 European leagues, in 24/25, recorded more completed passes into the penalty area than Milos Kerkez. He was head and shoulders above the rest, too. In fact, Kerkez was the only full back to exceed 100 of these - with 125 he was convincingly the front runner in this metric, 28 ahead of second-placed Diego Moreira (Strasbourg).
*Only Fulham generated more chances from open-play crosses from wide areas than Bournemouth, with only Liverpool exceeding the Cherries in terms of xG created from crosses. Four of Kerkez’s six league assists were from open-play crosses.*
Leading the way with passes into the penalty area would, naturally, lead to the profiling of Kerkez as a high-volume crosser. That’s not an inaccurate description, though his attacking game is so much more varied than that. Last season he registered the most passes into the final third out of all U21 full backs in the top 5 European leagues with 189, leading second-placed Omar El Hilali (Espanyol) by a staggering 34.
While he remains an offensive force for Bournemouth, being granted the freedom by Iraola to push forward when the team is in possession, Kerkez plays in an even more advanced role for Hungary. Since he made his senior international birth in 2022, Marco Rossi has deployed Milos as a left wing back; he’s essentially a winger at times for the national teams.
Hungary boss Rossi likes to have a balance with his wing backs—Loïc Négo is inclined to stay a little further back whilst Kerkez bombs on high and wide. He favours the use of wing-backs because it gives Hungary a greater chance of overloading the final third with numbers and, therefore, allows them to play with a higher probability of converting their opportunities. Simply, you’ve got seven players in close proximity to each other who have a chance of firing the ball towards goal.
Kerkez is platformed to his strengths - constantly finding himself in advanced positions down the left wing. Peach of a ball in…
‘Full throttle’ is the perfect encapsulation of Milos Kerkez with the ball at his feet. He’s not really an ‘overlapper’, rather, the Hungarian left back explodes into space. Milos boasts blistering pace with a low centre of gravity; he impressively placed in the 85th percentile for progressive carries in the Premier League last season.
Going the other way, Kerkez looks very promising too. There’s a body of evidence, over multiple seasons, to back that up. You can’t say the same for Frimpong at this moment in time. Not to say Jeremie’s a ‘poor’ defender, he’s just simply been involved in considerably less defensive work.
Out of all full backs aged 21 and under in the top 5 European leagues, Kerkez lead the way in 24/25 for aerial duels, and even just duels in general. In fairness, Bournemouth’s ultra-aggressive and intense style of football under Andoni Iraola massively aided this—Kerkez contested a considerably higher number of duels than the rest of his U21 full back mates.
Defensively, whilst far from complete, at 21 Milos is ‘sound’ in that department with an admirable tenacity and combativeness when dealing with right wingers in 1v1 situations. The Hungarian averages 1.77 tackles and interceptions per 90 whilst winning around 50% of his tackles he attempts. 5’8” perhaps isn’t ideal for a defender — though that seems to be becoming more of a pre-historic view — yet the man in question is extremely brave and more-than-competent in his duels. The height issue certainly can’t just be swept under the rug though. Frimpong is 5ft7, rumoured centre-back target Marc Guehi is 5ft10 and then there’s the problem of Salah, Mac Allister, Diaz and Wirtz all also being under 6 feet.
Kerkez is not a particularly prolific tackler yet; rather, he relies on strong positional awareness. His average of just 1.4 per 90 remains half of Alexander-Arnold’s and considerably less than the likes of Daniel Munoz (3.6) and Destiny Udogie (3.4). It’s not particularly a weakness. Merely a different style. Virgil van Dijk is never anywhere near the top of the league’s tackle charts.
What stands out is how he positions himself slightly narrower when the ball is on the opposite flank, allowing him to cut out switches or step into passing lanes. He’s not overly aggressive in stepping out, but he times his movements well, often intercepting passes aimed at the half-space or overlapping runners. His reactions and agility also help him to adjust quickly when wide forwards try to exploit gaps.
Playing under Iraola means Kerkez is constantly bombing forward and sprinting back, so his ability to sniff out danger during transitions is non-negotiable.
Kerkez is particularly effective in transitional moments, when possession changes, where his top-tier sense of awareness allows him to recover into shape swiftly and stop counterattacks. While not the most physically imposing defender, his acceleration and aggression give him the edge in short bursts to close down space and pounce on loose balls.
He’s a pretty good 1v1 defender at this stage of his development, winning 99 tackles in the league last season with a 53% success rate. Kerkez was frequently engaged in defensive actions and more than held his own in the physical battles.
Tough to beat 1v1, Kerkez stays low, mirrors his winger’s movements and uses his burst of pace to close space quickly. Even if a winger gets past him, his recovery speed and tenacity mean the battle’s far from over.
̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶n̶o̶u̶n̶c̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶u̶b̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶e̶d̶u̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶…̶
Milos Kerkez on joining Liverpool:
“I'm really happy.”
“It's a real honour for me, a privilege to come to play for one of the biggest clubs in the world, [the] biggest club in England. I'm just really, really happy and excited.”
“After this, I'll go home and in my hometown enjoy a few days, and then I can't really wait to come back and put the training kit on and start to train and prepare for the season.”
*All statistics/data used in this article are via the fantastic DataMB tool.*
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