Academy'A great experience' - Liverpool U21s visit Paris for friendly against PSG

The young Reds took the lead in Friday’s match at PSG’s Youth Academy but the hosts hit back and ran out 3-1 winners.

PSG invited Liverpool to their base on the outskirts of Paris for a warm-up fixture ahead of their UEFA Youth League semi-final versus Real Madrid next week.

For Page’s team, meanwhile, the game served as preparation for the upcoming Premier League 2 elimination play-offs.

Calvin Ramsay put the visitors ahead with a superb goal and they could have gone 2-0 up soon after when Will Wright won a penalty at the end of a neat passage of play. However, the striker missed from the spot and PSG responded strongly thereafter.

Head coach Page told Liverpoolfc.com: “I was really pleased with aspects of the performance and we were up against a very good PSG team. We went 1-0 through a brilliant solo goal by Rambo, a great finish that gave us a good start.

“Will reacted really well to missing the penalty because he had another two or three clear-cut chances. He’ll be disappointed that he didn’t score but in development football, that’s all part of his learning.

“The reason we have these games against top defenders is to expose him to those moments and hopefully the more he is exposed to them, the more consistent he will become in his final actions.

“The lads defended really, really well – I can’t fault their attitude and application at all. We were up against a very, very good PSG team that played similar to their first team with a bit of fluidity and freedom from an attacking point of view.

“In the main we coped with it well, but the one moment we didn’t quite get right by allowing them to play through the middle of us resulted in a goal.

“But there are a lot of learnings to take for the lads and it was a great experience as well.

“It’s never a bad thing to play against top-class opposition and I think even in defeats you are learning all the time. So, we’ll review the game, we’ll feed it back to the players and that will help us become better.

“There’s always positive moments and something you can take from it, even in defeats, in youth development and hopefully it will help us and put us in good stead for the play-offs in a couple of weeks.”

Josh Sonni-Lambie and Joe Bradshaw joined the U21s group for the trip and, on the former, Page said: “Josh had a good game and it was a great learning experience for him as well.

“More so defensively, as he had to be really disciplined in his defensive shape because of the possession they had, and that’s an aspect that all young, modern strikers need to have and work on.”