Heighway forced the excitement down hard.
Not a trace of it showed on his face.
He was an old-school academy coach, holding firm to the simplest, most fundamental principle of developing young players: countless gifted boys in football hadn’t failed because their talent wasn’t enough—they’d been ruined by being praised too early, too much, which made them restless, careless.
Talent was a gift.
It was also a cage.
So, he chose to say nothing at all about the lack of a weak foot.
He had no intention of loading Dean down with the weight of his own talent, and no intention of letting him get trapped early in the glow of being called a prodigy.
All he intended to do was have him grind away at the fundamentals, day after day.
Football, in the end, came down to fundamentals.
Heighway had seen players before who, blessed with real natural pace, leaned on their physical speed during their academy years and neglected proper technical training—after all, if you could just blow past a defender with one burst of speed, why bother grinding out the technique?
He’d been exactly that kind of player himself, once.
Which was precisely why he wanted Dean to grow up the steady, honest way.
“Don’t let up.”
“This wall-passing drill is the foundation underneath every technique there is.
This whole week, you’re training this and nothing else—a thousand touches a day, not one fewer.
Get the feel of it hammered so deep into your muscle memory it becomes automatic.”
“Now, on to the next piece of training.”
He reached down, picked up the ball at his feet, and held it in one hand.
“I’m going to throw the ball to you.
You return it to me using the inside of your foot—the same principle as the wall passing you just did.
The only difference is, this is a moving drill.
You can let the ball bounce and settle before you play it, or take it straight out of the air—whatever feels natural to you.
There’s only one thing that matters: proper foot shape, precise passing.”
Dean gathered his focus and gave a slight nod.
“I’m ready, boss.”
Heighway said nothing further, just raised a hand and tossed the ball gently.
The ball left his palm, rose slowly, arced, and drifted down toward Dean.
From the very first ball, Heighway’s eyes locked onto Dean and never let go.
He studied every last detail with total precision: the angle of his standing foot, how wide his foot opened for the strike, exactly where the ball met his foot, the coordination of his whole body—not missing a single thing.
In his decades of coaching academy football, kids starting from zero all shared the same problem, without exception.
Bodies stiff, posture tense, every movement driven by pure instinct, the whole body locked up, with no coordination to speak of.
But Dean completely overturned everything he thought he knew.
It seemed like Dean had already found his feel for the ball back during the wall-passing drill.
Right from the start of this new drill, Dean’s whole body stayed loose and relaxed, without a trace of a beginner’s stiffness.
Whether it was a ground pass off a bounce, or a half-volley taken straight out of the air, his body adapted to the flight of the ball almost instantly, every time.
‘A natural-born athlete, no question.’
Heighway understood at once—this had to be the foundation Dean had built up through years of physical activity.
He’d heard from Dalglish that Dean had started running on his own from a very young age, had even done some striking-based training, and got into fights regularly at school.
Years of accumulated physical activity had given Dean exceptional body coordination and flexibility.
As the training continued, the blue bead in Dean’s field of vision kept climbing steadily.
This dynamic drill was pushing it up faster than the static wall-passing had. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Dean trained with total seriousness.
There was one simple, honest thought running through his head: Liverpool was paying money for this training, so he couldn’t afford to slack off.
So, he stayed completely focused, every single time.
Watching this, Heighway kept nodding, thoroughly pleased with him.
Privately, he settled on a decision in his mind.
The Kirkby academy’s accommodation was organized into clearly defined tiers.
The most ordinary academy players were all housed together in shared four-person rooms, meeting only the most basic standard of accommodation.
Boys showing strong performance and standout potential could apply for the better-appointed two-person rooms.
Only the most exceptional talents—the core prospects the club had chosen to invest in specially qualified for the rare, coveted single rooms.
By the usual rules, a brand-new player starting from zero like Dean, whatever his talent, was supposed to start out in a shared four-person room and work his way up gradually.
But Heighway broke with convention outright.
He was going to arrange a two-person room for him.
That kind of treatment, across the whole academy setup, was exceedingly rare.
Time slipped steadily forward.
The Kirkby training ground, empty and cold at first, gradually became active.
One training pitch after another began filling up with squad players, the sound of running feet, coaches shouting instructions, and the thud of footballs all weaving together, breaking the stillness of the morning.
The whole academy site had fully woken up.
Heighway had no choice but to pause his one-on-one coaching for the time being.
As Kirkby’s academy director, his workload was heavy and diverse, and his single most important goal this season was leading Liverpool’s youth side to silverware across every competition they entered.
Last season, the youth side he’d personally led had won the FA Youth Cup—the strongest card he held within the club.
He had, with his own two hands, developed one generation of genuinely skilled academy talent after another, leading teams to championships.
He’d proven the value of Kirkby’s academy system with real, hard results.
But those dazzling results carried no weight at all in front of Liverpool’s current first team.
Ever since Benítez took charge at Anfield, he had abandoned entirely the promotion logic Liverpool had spent years cultivating in its academy, placing his stubborn faith instead in bought-in, ready-to-use talent.
He wasn’t willing to use a single one of the players who’d won that youth championship coming out of Kirkby.
Heighway had strong footing to stand on.
Benítez had even stronger footing.
The Spanish manager held Champions League and FA Cup titles to his name, weighty honours that made his standing among the club’s senior leadership unshakeable.
Everyone backed his approach to building the squad without question.
On top of all that, there was a not-entirely-secret rumour quietly circulating inside the club: the team was about to change owners.
In the middle of this unsettled transition, senior leadership had no attention to spare for building up the academy—they cared only about the first team’s short-term results.
This left the Kirkby academy stuck in a genuinely awkward position, more or less an orphaned concern nobody upstairs particularly wanted.
This was exactly why the thought of leaving Kirkby had already started forming in Heighway’s mind.
He was finding it a bit hard to keep going here.
The rift between Melwood and Kirkby only kept growing wider.
And at the very core of that conflict sat Benítez.
Because even winning a youth championship couldn’t earn a shred of favour from the first team, or from senior leadership.
Pushing these thoughts down, Heighway gave Dean his instructions.
“Keep working on the wall-passing drill here by yourself.
Hold your rhythm steady, don’t rush trying to get results too fast.
I need to go handle the squad’s training schedule and the day’s other business.”
Dean nodded seriously, obedient.
“Okay.”
Heighway turned and walked off, heading out across the various training pitches to coordinate everything.
Dean stayed behind alone at his out-of-the-way pitch, continuing the same repetitive wall-passing drill.
Hundreds upon hundreds of repetitions had already made his movements steadily more polished.
The colour of the blue bead kept slowly deepening, giving him plenty of motivation to keep training hard.
After finishing several sets of high-intensity work in a row, he stood up, stretched his body out, and headed toward the academy’s washroom.
Crossing through the training area, he happened to pass youth coach Ian Barrigan, who was walking a young white couple and a very small child through the grounds on a facility tour.
Ian Barrigan hesitated for a moment, unable to recall the child’s name, the words were trailing off on his lips.
The child’s mother stepped in at once, smiling, and filled in the gap.
“His name’s Curtis Jones.
He just turned five this past January.”
Hearing that, Ian nodded, understanding, and smiled down at the boy in front of him.
“Curtis is very young still, but we can start bringing him in for a bit of light training, get him interested in the game.
Then next year, he can officially join Kirkby and start proper, structured academy training.”
With that, Ian went on, pointing toward the U10 squad’s training pitch up ahead, explaining the club’s training pathway.
Dean didn’t really pay much attention.
By the time he came back from the washroom, the four of them were still there, deep in conversation, and the U10 session had already picked up in full swing.
Ian raised a hand, pointing toward a nimble-looking little boy out on the pitch, and told the family, “Look at that one there.
Trent.”
“He got into Kirkby last year through a football summer camp the club runs in partnership with a local primary school.
He hasn’t been in proper training all that long, but his rate of improvement’s been remarkable.
He’s only eight this year, and his technique, his vision, his sense for passing are already well ahead of kids his age.
The club’s already settled it—next season, he’s going straight up into the U12 squad for training…
Curtis coming to Kirkby, he won’t get lost in the shuffle here…”
Watching the group of boys out on the pitch, still so young, and yet already rooted in the Reds’ academy system, something stirred quietly in him.
Starting on football at five or six years old?
Was he starting too late, beginning now?
Dean didn’t know the answer.
But he knew he had to train hard—hard enough to actually deserve the hundred and ten pounds a week Liverpool was giving him.
With that thought, he hurried back toward his own little training pitch.
Meaning to get back to the wall-passing drill.
And when he got back to the pitch, there was someone new there—a young player roughly his own age.
Seeing Dean return, the boy smiled and held out his hand.
“Hey, Dean.
I’m Conor Coady.”
Coady added, with a grin, “Your future roommate.”