Milos Kerkez: Embracing Responsibility at Liverpool

Milos Kerkez laughs before he even sits down. The sun is dropping over Chicago, Liverpool’s players are drifting through the team hotel, and the 22-year-old left-back is still fielding congratulations for a wedding that never happened.

No! This is wrong, everyone gets this wrong!” he protests, the words tumbling out as he relives the photo that went viral back home in Vrbas. Kerkez, smart suit, serious face, escorting a bride into church. Serbia assumed its young star had tied the knot.

“It was my oldest brother. In Serbia it is normal for the younger brothers to take the bride to the church. That’s what I did and now everyone thinks I got married. It was Rade, not me.”

He grins. “I keep having to explain to people that I never got married. I was going around the club when we started back and people were congratulating me. I’m like: ‘No, I’m not ready for this yet!’”

Marriage can wait. Responsibility cannot.

From Slot’s shock exit to an Iraola reunion

Kerkez’s summer has swung between family, upheaval and opportunity. Home in Serbia. Holidays in Montenegro and Spain. Then a frantic knock on the bedroom door.

“I was back in Serbia, I was sleeping and my brother woke me up,” he recalls. “He knocks on my door and it was a big surprise. Nobody knew. I couldn’t believe it, I was like: ‘Wow.’”

Arne Slot, the coach who had just delivered Liverpool the Premier League title, was gone. Sacked 12 months after climbing the mountain. Kerkez, part of last summer’s lavish recruitment drive, found out like everyone else – jolted from sleep, stunned.

He has stayed in touch with Slot, exchanging messages after the dismissal. There is no bitterness in his voice, no hint of blame for a season that never quite settled. “Tough for everyone,” is his verdict on a campaign where every solved problem seemed to spawn another.

Then came the twist. Liverpool turned to Andoni Iraola. For Kerkez, it felt like fate.

The defender had grown under Iraola at Bournemouth, where his relentless running, direct bursts and defensive discipline turned him into a £40m full-back and earned him a place in the Professional Footballers’ Association’s team of the year in 2024-25. Now, the man who helped shape him has followed him to Anfield.

“I was delighted, honestly,” Kerkez says. “He helped me and improved me a lot in the two years I spent with him. I was really happy, obviously for myself but also for the team. Everyone knows what type of football he plays so I think he is the perfect fit for us.”

Double sessions, ‘consequences’ and a style built for him

Liverpool’s pre-season base at Chicago Fire’s performance centre has become a laboratory for Iraola’s ideas. Double sessions. Endless pressing drills. Small-sided games with a sting in the tail.

“If you see footage of how we all are after training, all lying down, then you can see what he is preparing us for,” Kerkez says. “You definitely need legs and good condition for what he wants us to do, but we will be all right.”

When the players split into three or four teams, Iraola adds his own edge.

“When we play games with three or four teams he calls it ‘consequences’ and the losing team and the team that finishes second has to run. How much you have to run depends on what he decides in that moment, but there is always running for the team that loses.”

This is not a manager who hides behind structure. He wants duels. Risk. Aggression.

“It’s the intensity. He’s not scared to play one-on-one all over the pitch, to press high and to be on the front foot always,” Kerkez explains. “He’s intense and he likes details. He’s very professional. He likes to talk sometimes but not a lot. I think maybe he doesn’t want to get too close to some players and wants to show that everyone is the same in the team, so he doesn’t want to get too close to anyone in particular. He keeps it professional, with a lot of hard work.”

For Kerkez, this is familiar ground. Under Slot, Liverpool often built from the back with full-backs drifting inside, asked to help construct attacks rather than rip down the touchline. At Bournemouth, his game was different – and devastating.

“The gaffer likes to play more with the full-backs down the line, underlapping, overlapping,” he says of Iraola. “It worked well for me at Bournemouth, so I think it will also work well for me here.”

The message from Iraola has always started with the basics.

“He always told me that defending is really important, for him that is first of all, and because you are a full-back you need to defend really hard. Everything you can do in front of you is like a bonus. So I was always focused first on defending and then running forward to help the wingers.

“He showed me that when you do your job then you are free to do what you want, so I felt really free with him. He lets you be more free to do your stuff.”

That freedom, married to Liverpool’s need for energy on the left after Andy Robertson’s departure, sets up a pivotal season. Kerkez no longer has to convince the coach. Now he has to convince the crowd.

Built different: trucks at 10, smacks on the head at 22

Kerkez insists he doesn’t feel the weight of replacing a legend or the glare that comes with a £40m price tag.

“Honestly, I don’t care about pressure,” he says. “I don’t like ‘pressure’ and that stuff. I grew up a bit different in Serbia. We grew up different. You could say maybe we are built a bit different.”

Then comes the story that explains the steel behind the smile.

“For example, I started to drive a truck when I was 10 years old.” He sees the raised eyebrow and clarifies. “It was with my dad. I climbed in and then I took the wheel. He was doing the pedals, I was only quite small so I couldn’t reach them.”

That father, Sebastijan, still drives him now – literally. On some days, he takes his son to Liverpool’s training centre. Both parents, Sebastijan and Tijana, have moved to England to help their second son settle into Premier League life.

“They are very important,” Kerkez says. “My brothers have their own lives now but my parents are with me and I am much happier they are with me. My dad is here to smack me sometimes on the top of the head and to remind me.

“Sometimes you play a few good games and maybe you start to get a bit carried away. But my dad is here to smack me. I come straight back down and I switch straight back on.”

It is a grounding that has served him well through a turbulent first year at Anfield. Liverpool’s expensive rebuild did not immediately deliver, and while Kerkez fared better than several of last summer’s arrivals, he was still caught in the storm.

Now, on a US tour that takes Liverpool to New York to face Wrexham on Wednesday, he cuts the figure of someone ready to lead rather than just survive. Around Chicago, staff have noticed how Kerkez and compatriot Dominik Szoboszlai have stepped forward, voices rising within a young squad.

Marriage? No. Responsibility? Absolutely.

Learning from Robertson, looking at Salah, making his own way

Kerkez arrived as the heir to Andy Robertson, the relentless Scotland captain whose legacy at Liverpool is etched into modern club history. That could crush a young defender. Instead, Robertson opened the door.

“Throughout the year he helped me,” Kerkez says. “We had a few conversations about crosses and about the big lungs we need to have so we can run until tomorrow. He did a lot of seasons, I should also have the same.

“We had conversations like that. Also, where to put the last ball, to focus, to put your head up and sometimes put better crosses in.”

When the moment came for Robertson to leave Anfield for Tottenham, Kerkez kept his distance.

“I didn’t want to get a lot on to him,” he explains. “He was a bit emotional as everything was coming to an end. I didn’t want to get on to him too much.”

Respect, not imitation, is the theme.

“We all know what Andy did for the club. I’m not running away from that. I want to make my own way. I’m going to work hard. I know what it means to play for Liverpool. I showed it a bit last year and I am going to show it more this year.”

If he ever needs a reminder of what “making your own way” looks like, he only has to glance at Mohamed Salah’s numbers. One recent moment at the Axa training ground left him almost stunned.

“Before we left the Axa to come to Chicago I saw on TV a show about how many goals and assists Mo had, it was something like 380,” Kerkez says. “I just walked out! ‘What is this?’ I was thinking. Time flies. A new generation comes and hopefully everything will be good.”

He says it with a smile, but the point lingers. Robertson has gone. Salah, though still central, is closer to the end than the beginning. Slot is already part of the club’s past. Iraola’s Liverpool will belong to others.

Kerkez wants to be one of them. Not the brother walking the bride to the church, mistaken for the main act. This time, he intends to be at the heart of the story.