Liverpool’s Academy Director Alex Inglethorpe has spoken in length to James Pearce about the Bobby Duncan saga – two months after the teenager left for Italy.
Duncan departed for Fiorentina on September 2, just days after his agent Saif Rubie had gone public with his client’s unhappiness with some ridiculously exaggerated quotes that saw him get in a row with Jamie Carragher on Twitter.
As of yet, Duncan hasn’t made the Fiorentina bench and has only featured in the youth team, which is exactly what he would have doing on Merseyside anyway.
Inglethorpe has suggested Duncan didn’t have the ‘psychological stamina’ to make it at Liverpool, citing how the current first-XI is full of players who ‘didn’t quit’.
“What I’d say about Bobby is that we wish him well,” Inglethorpe told The Athletic – which is well worth the sign up.
“Look, not every player is necessarily going to want to wait and develop under us and we have to respect that.
“To break into elite football is going to be difficult, wherever you are. You need psychological stamina. You need to be able to put the hard yards in over a consistent period and accept the setbacks that come your way.
“Like most things in life, that creates a resilience that will help you in the future.
“I’m sure the time Mo Salah spent at Chelsea gave him a layer of that resilience. When you develop that skill of finding a way in life then you take it with you and it’s very useful.
“There are 11 shining examples of that playing at Anfield every week. They all at some point had a period in their career where they had to overcome a problem or prove doubters wrong.
“They worked hard, they didn’t quit.”
Like Inglethorpe, we hope Duncan does well in Italy.
The manner in which he departed left an unpleasant taste in the mouth, but it was more the fault of his representative than the teenager.
Duncan’s aim will to impress in the youth teams and get a shot at Serie A before the end of the campaign.
If he doesn’t, he may well end up wondering why he bothered.