“As a kid, he always spoke to me about Liverpool,” says one of Bradley Barcola’s youth coaches, Amaury Barlet. No wonder that when the Merseyside club came knocking, the forward “didn’t ask any questions”, as he said in his first interview after a £123m move to Anfield .
Barcola joined after three seasons with Paris Saint-Germain but came through the ranks at Lyon, where interviews are conducted with returning youth players at the start of each campaign. It was during one such discussion that Barcola made his revelation to Barlet. “When he was 15, 16, it was his dream [to play for Liverpool],” Barlet says. “Maybe that changed when he was 19 or 20 …” Or perhaps not.
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Either way, Barcola made a summer exit from PSG a priority. Despite his contract with the European champions running until 2028, he looked increasingly a spare part in a PSG attack full of world-class talent. Barcola falls into that bracket, too, but it did not prevent him from being overlooked in the biggest fixtures. Last season he started all of PSG’s Champions League fixtures up to and including the last-16 second leg against Chelsea, only to be demoted to the bench thereafter. Although he has played in the past two Champions League finals, he was restricted to substitute appearances in both.
Barcola cannot have too many quarrels about Luis Enrique’s decision to start Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in his place. The Georgian’s signing in January 2025 did, however, spell trouble for the Frenchman. An inability to be as effective on the right or through the middle limited opportunities in the big games and made an exit the logical choice, especially after proving himself capable of shining on the biggest stage: half of Barcola’s goals for France (three of six) came at the most recent World Cup.
For all parties, the timing was perfect. Barcola’s performances in North America, in part, allowed PSG to make a near €100m profit on him. He is the club’s most expensive departure, outstripping the €90m received from Al-Hilal for Neymar, and contributed significantly to PSG making about €350m in player sales, a record for a Ligue 1 club in a summer window.
Barcola was immensely popular in the PSG dressing room, evidenced by the outpouring of goodbye messages from now former teammates. He also leaves with the best wishes of the club. Despite his desire to join Liverpool, he never agitated for a move. It is understood his absence from matchday squads at the start of this season can be attributed to the club’s desire to protect Barcola, not sanction him.
“He’s got good people around him,” says Barlet, who worked with Barcola at under-12 and under-13 level before being reunited with him at under-16 level. “His parents always said the same things as us, the coaches … I know his family. He has the perfect entourage to come through at an academy.”
The proof is in his brother, Malcolm, also making it as a professional; the 27-year-old plays as a goalkeeper in Morocco with Ittihad Tanger. Malcolm, who came through at Lyon without making a first-team appearance, was something of a late bloomer. By modern standards, the same applies to Bradley, whose development was not accelerated through bumping him up the age divisions. He made his first-team debut at 19. Compare that to Rayan Cherki, for example, who played for Lyon at 16.
“He wasn’t small, but he was … very fresh,” Barlet says. “He was very thin. He hadn’t yet grown. At under-16s, he played the whole year with us, apart from a couple of games with the under-17s at international level in April-May. He was someone we were waiting to develop on an athletic level.”
When he did make the breakthrough, however, he made an immediate impression. He made his debut midway through the 2021-22 season and needed only one full campaign to convince PSG to spend €45m to acquire his services.
Barcola’s tardy physical development affected his game. “Because he was playing against defenders that were stronger than him, he always wanted to get ahead of them,” Barlet says. “He was very often offside … he is always someone who has had a habit of making a lot of runs in behind the defence.”
Barcola did not start out as a winger. “He was a bit of a fox in the box; he scored a lot of goals,” Barlet says. “He scored acrobatic volleys, toe-pokes, left foot, right foot … it was just his heading that wasn’t necessarily his strong suit.”
Barcola’s most prolific season came in 2024-25, when he scored 21 goals and provided 21 assists. His end product has come into question, there being a perceived wastefulness to his game. A particularly profligate performance against Newcastle in the Champions League in November 2023 incited one pundit in France to call him a “little lamb”. Barcola has insulated himself from the criticism. “I didn’t know what was being said about me, but I knew that there would be criticism,” he told Le Parisien. “I don’t pay any attention to it, whether what they say is good or bad.”
There are people he does listen to though. “I don’t have many friends. I have very few, in fact, so when they say, ‘You’re doing something stupid,’ it is because they’re right, and if they say that I played well, it’s also because it’s true. I don’t listen to what is said on the outside. To be completely honest, it’s my friends who send me the things [being said] in the media. Sometimes we laugh about it, but it doesn’t go any further than that.”
Barlet recalls Barcola’s close relationship at youth level with Castello Lukeba, now of RB Leipzig, and Billy Koumetio, formerly of Liverpool and now at Charlton. “He’s a very loyal person. When he was young, he had tears in his eyes; he was annoyed when he lost, but he wouldn’t criticise his teammates. He was more annoyed with himself because he is a real competitor.”
He describes Barcola as “the ideal teammate” and “endearing”. The 24-year-old’s immediate task is to endear himself to the Liverpool faithful. The price tag and the club’s middling start under Andoni Iraola add a certain pressure from which he should be able to insulate himself.
In any case, he is the kind of player Liverpool are screaming out for. Luis Enrique said Barcola was “one of the best dribblers in Europe”, and the shifting tactical meta in the Premier League should play into his hands. Liverpool have struggled against low blocks in recent matches but the game is increasingly about smartly exploiting the open space in transition; Liverpool now have a master in that art.
Iraola says that he wants his wingers to be “gamechangers”; Barcola can be that and, finally given a starring role, is desperate to show it.
Barcola joined after three seasons with Paris Saint-Germain but came through the ranks at Lyon, where interviews are conducted with returning youth players at the start of each campaign. It was during one such discussion that Barcola made his revelation to Barlet. “When he was 15, 16, it was his dream [to play for Liverpool],” Barlet says. “Maybe that changed when he was 19 or 20 …” Or perhaps not.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Luke Entwistle. Published 3 Sept 2026, 12:30 pm.
