When Liverpool kicked off their latest European campaign with a 2-1 victory over Atletico Madrid, the bench told you everything you needed to know about where this club is right now. Alongside the senior figures sat five academy graduates, Lewis Koumas, Trey Nyoni, Jayden Danns, James McConnell and Luke Chambers, who between them had amassed precisely six Champions League appearances before kick-off. That is not a squad brimming with continental pedigree. That is a group finding its feet in the biggest competition in club football, and doing so very much on the job.

The shift in the squad's makeup is stark when you look at the numbers. Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker and Joe Gomez are the only survivors from that 2019 triumph, with Kostas Tsimikas the sole other player in the camp to have even experienced a final, and that came as an unused substitute in 2022. All four are out of contract in 2027. An unprecedented amount of turnover in recent years means the changing of the guard is almost complete, and the new generation are going to have to learn fast.

Rio Ngumoha made his first Champions League start on the night. Jeremy Jacquet, Victor Munoz and Koumas all made their debuts in the competition. The injuries compounding the situation are significant, Cody Gakpo, Joe Gomez, Giovanni Leoni, Hugo Ektike and Conor Bradley all absent, with Federico Chiesa ineligible for European action regardless. There is no cavalry waiting on the horizon. This is the squad Andoni Iraola has, and it is a very different proposition from the mentality monsters of just a few years ago.

Iraola was himself managing his first ever Champions League fixture against Atletico, yet rather than dwelling on the inexperience surrounding him, he appeared to lean into it. The Spaniard was repeatedly spotted during the match talking directly to the academy youngsters seated behind him, and at one point passed his tactical notes along the bench, actively encouraging them to read through them and understand what his Liverpool is trying to achieve. It is a small detail. It is also a revealing one.

This is a manager who is not treating his academy players as mere makeweights filling a bench in an emergency. He is treating them as the future of the club, because, frankly, given the contracts expiring in 2027 and the rebuilding job ahead, they are. Koumas grabbed his opportunity with both hands during the summer, and the early signs suggest Iraola's willingness to trust youth is being repaid with the right attitude in return.

The contrast with Arne Slot is one the source material does not shy away from, and nor should we. Slot faced persistent criticism for failing to give the academy a meaningful role, especially given that those same players had helped beat Chelsea in the 2024 League Cup final just months before he arrived. A club with Liverpool's academy tradition deserved better than that. Iraola, shaped by years at Athletic Bilbao, a club built entirely on a philosophy of homegrown talent, understands instinctively why the academy cannot be an afterthought.

The 2027 Champions League final takes place at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, the very venue where Liverpool lifted the trophy back in 2019. The poetry of returning there eight years later is not lost on anyone connected with the club. Ngumoha, by his own admission in awe of Anfield on a European night for the first time, has barely scratched the surface of what that kind of occasion feels like. If Liverpool are to build towards those moments again, he and his teammates will need many more nights like this one.

Realistic? Not necessarily, given the depth and experience challenges currently facing this squad. But Iraola does not appear to be managing purely for the immediate. Beating Atletico is a positive start, but the Spaniard is clearly building something, and crucially, he is building it with the next generation sitting beside him on the bench, reading his notes, learning his way of thinking. Liverpool have not had a famous Anfield European night since that Barcelona comeback in 2019. The ingredients to create new ones are slowly being assembled, one conversation at a time.

For Iraola's young squad, this is just the beginning of the story. The question is how quickly they can write the next chapter.