Rory Smith - Lazar Markovic

Lazar Markovic will prove himself worth Liverpool’s wait

Rory Smith
Last updated at 12:01AM, August 12 2014

Three times in five years, Liverpool might have signed Lazar Markovic. Three times, they demurred. Damien Comolli worried that the teenager, offered to him for £2 million while he was the club’s technical director, would not be eligible for a work permit. Kenny Dalglish baulked at what he saw as an inflated price. And then Brendan Rodgers declined, mistakenly believing he had already been promised to Chelsea.

Now, at the fourth attempt, they have their man. All the signs are that he will be worth not just the money, but the wait.

To listen to the paeans of praise lavished on the 20-year-old since he first exploded into football’s consciousness at Partizan Belgrade, it would be easy to assume that Markovic has always been singled out for stardom.

He was just 17, barely out of the club’s famed Belin academy, when dozens of scouts were flocking across Europe to watch him; there were more than 20 at one Belgrade derby in his first season as a senior player.

When he was 18, Andrea Stramacci-oni, in charge of Inter Milan at the time, called him “exceptional", waxing lyrical about his blistering acceleration. By the time he was 19, Avram Grant, briefly his coach at Partizan, claimed that “apart from [Cristiano] Ronaldo and [Lionel] Messi, he was one of the best talents" he had ever seen at that age.

Rui Costa, no mean judge of talent, described him as a “pure talent". “His speed and skill can make a difference in the Barclays Premier League," said the former Portuguese playmaker, now Benfica’s technical director. “He has the ability and flexibility to escape defenders easily. He is cold-blooded when he is in a one-to-one situation and he is not afraid to face opponents. He is always eager to learn. He takes risks, he likes to attack. He is a huge talent."

His story, though, is not quite so simple. Markovic was born in Cacak, a town more renowned for producing basketball players than footballers. His father had played in Yugoslavia’s second division for the local club, Borac, and soon both of his sons — Filip, the elder by two years, and Lazar — were enrolled in Borac’s academy.

Both were quick, both nimble, both wide players who loved to cut inside. Lazar’s room was decorated with posters of his favourite team, Chelsea, and in particular with images of Gianfranco Zola, his childhood hero.

It was, though, Filip who seemed the more promising, and by the time he was 14, word had spread that deep in basketball country there was a player worth watching. Partizan dispatched Nedeljko Kostic, the head of their academy, and Sladjan Scepovic, their scout, to take a look. They were impressed. They agreed a deal with Borac, only to discover that Filip’s father insisted they sign Lazar, 12, too.

“He did not want his sons to be separated at such an early age," explains Vladimir Novakovic, a Serbian football journalist. Their mother, a lawyer, gave up her job in Cacak to be with her boys when they made the 100-mile journey to the capital.

The move would prove to suit Lazar more than his brother. He thrived at Belin, helped in part by the searing speed that had made him such a formidable sprinter at high school that he was considered a potential professional athlete and in part by Kostic’s golden touch, his careful crafting of his young charges’ talent.

Belin has churned out the likes of Stefan Savic, Matija Nastasic and Stevan Jovetic in recent years. There was no better place for the receptive Markovic to develop.

Rui Costa described him as “focused"; Novakovic says that, apart from a red card for his part in a brawl with Mirko Vucinic, of Juventus, in last season’s Europa League semi-final, he “does not have a stain on his career, he is very well-behaved and his mother moving to Belgrade is probably the key factor in that."

Partizan knew he would not be with them for long. Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayern Munich and Fiorentina all looked at him; it was widely assumed Chelsea had negotiated a first option on him with his agent, Fali Ramadani. Even when he signed for Benfica — his brother, Filip, was included in the deal — Dragan Duric, Partizan’s president, seemed to hint it was part of some sort of masterplan that would eventually take him to Stamford Bridge. Rodgers had heard the same rumour. It was enough to put him off.

Not for long, though. Markovic shone in Portugal, his effortless speed, his gliding style convincing Liverpool that he was worth one more attempt. This time, they would not be denied. They have their man. They have waited a long time for this.


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/clubs/liverpool/article4173574.ece