Six countries in nine years: Kerkez's journey to Liverpool

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Following Milos Kerkez's move from AFC Bournemouth to Liverpool, football writer Ben Bloom looks at the Hungarian's incredible journey from Serbia to Merseyside.

If there is one player likely to take the upheaval of a move from AFC Bournemouth to Liverpool in their stride it is Milos Kerkez. After all, what is 200 miles when you have already traversed a continent?

Prior to joining Bournemouth while still a teenager two years ago, Kerkez had already relocated from Serbia to Austria, Hungary, Italy and then the Netherlands in a determined bid to reach the upper echelons of football.

The next step was England’s south coast – and a place in the Premier League’s Fan Team of the Season – and now he has joined the reigning champions.

The man made by so much of Europe has ascended the ladder’s highest rung.

Early travels

It was in the small Serbian town of Vrbas that Kerkez’s football journey began, learning the basics the hard way on the streets alongside his older brothers Rade and Marko, who is also now a professional player.

"My brothers were tough on me," Kerkez told The Guardian last year. "They would tackle me, I would fall, my skin would be cut and bleed. I realised: 'I like to do this.'

"Cars would not be able to drive down the road because otherwise our ball would hit the cars, so they had to turn around. We’re playing football now. Roadblock. They were good times."

A more formal football education kicked in with his local side OFK Vrbas and then nearby club Hajduk Kula, before the first big relocation with his family to Austria, where he spent almost five years rising the youth ranks of the country’s most successful club, Rapid Vienna.

From those relative giants, a move to Hungary then saw him briefly drop down to third-tier Hodmezovasarhely, and a first crack at senior football for Gyor, a club who once reached the European Cup semi-finals (in 1965) but were then playing in the second tier.

Kerkez was cemented as Gyor's first-choice left-back even before his 17th birthday, and interest quickly emerged from across Europe.

Having initially intended to develop where he was, a personal phone call from AC Milan sporting director and Italy legend Paolo Maldini in January 2021 prompted a change of plan.

"There was a lot of interest in me in the winter," Kerkez explained to Scouted a year later. "Everything was going fast because the period was so short.

"I actually wanted to stay in Hungary to grow more physically and leave in the summer.

“Two days before the [closure of the transfer] window, Maldini called me personally, and he wanted a meeting with me and my father, and we spoke, and that was a big pull for me. You know when Maldini is calling you, you are not thinking too much.

“After that, it was obvious I was going to go to Milan. It was a big club, and when they want you like this, you cannot say no.”

Struggles at Milan

Bags packed, it was onto the fourth country of his fledgling football career, but while Italy brought further evolution it also provided frustration for a young man desperate to prove himself.

After impressing in the AC Milan youth team, Kerkez was regularly asked to train with the first-team squad alongside players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Olivier Giroud and Theo Hernandez – an experience he described as “crazy” and “the perfect way for me to grow”.

Liverpool's Conor Bradley faces Milos Kerkez of AC Milan in an Under-21s match

Having only come on at half-time, he scored twice in a 2021/22 pre-season friendly against Pro Sesto on his debut first-team outing. But, with opportunities in short supply, it would turn out to be his sole senior appearance.

“I expected more first-team football after that,” he admitted. “I was expecting to get a chance because I was performing better than any full-back in the Primavera [Milan’s youth team] from any team. But unfortunately, it didn’t go that way.

“Maybe I deserved a chance, but every club has their philosophy, how they work with the youth, so in the end I decided because of that I wanted to leave and play adult football.”

Almost exactly a year to the day after moving to Italy, it was time to depart for foreign fields once again.

No place like home

Despite interest from Germany, it was onto Netherlands that the Kerkez wagon next rolled, joining AZ Alkmaar, where he experienced European football for the first time and did enough in one season to catch the eye at Bournemouth.

Milos Kerkez scores for AZ Alkmaar vs Lazio in the UEFA Europa Conference League

A year later he was heading to England and the Premier League, relocating just outside Poole on the south coast with his mother Tiijana, and father, Sebastijan, who also acts as his agent.

It is thanks to his father’s family heritage that Kerkez represents Hungary internationally, breaking into the senior side for a UEFA Nations League match against England in 2022.

While he has faced criticism from some in Serbia for not representing the country of his birth, it was while playing club football for Gyor that he received his first international call up for Hungary Under-17s.

“Serbia never called,” Zerkez explained to Scouted. “Hungary shows me big respect, and that’s what I like.

“They gave my family big respect from an early age and that’s unforgettable for me, so I want to give double back. From the beginning I decided that if I get to a good enough level, I want to represent Hungary’s national team.”

Despite that, through all of his travels, Serbia has always remained the place he calls home.

He has built a house near where he grew up and insists he is happiest when outdoors in nature. Fishing is one of his biggest passions.

“In the summer when I go [to Serbia] for a holiday I just go for three, four days, I’ll be alone in a house, maybe with one friend, chill there, chop wood, make fire, camp, fish, that’s it, no phone,” he told the Guardian.

His aspiration is to have enough land to fill a lake with fish and spend his days trying to catch them in complete serenity.

Only then would there be no need to speak any of the five languages - Serbian, German, Hungarian, English and some Italian - he has picked up on his travels.

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