Image via Liverpool FC
Pretty early on in his time at Liverpool’s academy, Mateusz Musialowski scored several impressive goals for the under-18s. The pick of the bunch would be a goal against Newcastle’s U18 side that went viral. In it, he takes the ball past five opposition players before rifling a shot into the corner of the net. He was quickly dubbed “the Polish Messi”.
We’re over a year on from that goal now, and many Liverpool fans (myself included) expected to see him in a match day squad for the League or FA Cup at least once, but that never happened.
So what’s going on? Why has he gone from seemingly being the next academy graduate to break into the first team to languishing in the under-23s? I’m going to try to ascertain where Musialowski is at and where he might be headed, both literally and metaphorically.
We’ll start with last July, when Musialowski signed a professional contract with Liverpool. It was shortly after this that he was developing a few issues with fitness throughout the pre-season and was unable to fully contribute. Despite this, he graduated to the under-23 set-up for the 21-22 season. This transition probably explains why he didn’t quite make as much of an impact as he did in his first season on Merseyside. He had an up-and-down time of it, as he tried to adapt, but he rarely made a telling impact.
This summer, reports have emerged that Musialowski might be getting loaned out to an Ekstraklasa side to aid his development. Śląsk Wrocław allegedly reached out to Liverpool to ascertain if they could procure his talents on a loan, with Raków Częstochowa also reportedly registering interest in a loan move. Personally, I think any buy option would definitely be excluded if a deal were to materialise, which I believe at present seems more likely than not. I can imagine if we are still in this position, and Śląsk and Raków are still interested in Musialowski’s services closer to the end of the transfer window, then a loan deal could happen.
Yesterday, Musialowski scored two goals in a 5-4 victory for Liverpool’s under-21s against Leeds. It seems to me that he will spend pre-season at Liverpool regardless of whether any loan deal is agreed. Personally speaking as both the author of this article and a Liverpool supporter, I would welcome a loan move to the Ekstraklasa for Musialowski for him to get accustomed to senior football before hopefully being able to become a more important member of Liverpool’s squad. I would hope that his development could be as rapid as Harvey Elliott’s when he spent a season on loan at Blackburn Rovers before coming back and slotting straight into Jürgen Klopp’s plans. This is obviously wishful thinking on my part, but both the Championship and the Ekstraklasa have similarities in some of the patterns of play.
Whether it is with Liverpool’s development sides or in the Ekstraklasa, Musialowski looks to have a big season ahead of him. In either case we can only hope that the upward trajectory that plateaued last season will take off once more.
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