Since breaking into the Liverpool first team and making 23 total appearances during the 2023-24 season, Conor Bradley has been tipped to become a defensive mainstay for the Reds. A series of injuries in the time since have seemed to complicate matters slightly, but whenever he’s been fit he’s impressed.
Bradley has especially stood out when given chances to play in the biggest games, and he did exactly that again on Tuesday when he put in a Man of the Match performance against Real Madrid, shutting down Ballon d-Or striver Vinicius, Jr., under the lights at Anfield in the Champions League and once again reminding everyone just how good he can be.
“Conor was outstanding,” said manager Arne Slot of his right back’s performance. “Last season he was outstanding against Real Madrid as well but had to go off after 80 minutes because of injury. Now, three days after he played 90 minutes against Villa, he again played 90 minutes with incredible intensity against Vinicius.
“I told the players before the game, they have scored 26 goals in La Liga and Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius have 24 goal contributions together. So if you want to have any chance of winning you must defend well, but great individuals can score as well and these two definitely can so Conor defended very well against Vinicius.”
A full four day break between Madrid on Tuesday and Manchester City on Sunday might give Bradley the time he likely needs to fully recover from his efforts—both against Madrid and over the past weekend against Aston Villa—but there will also be hopes that, just maybe, at 22 years of age Bradley will have put his niggling injury issues behind him.
For some young players, the rigours of professional football can lead to an uptick in injury issues as they finish growing but if handled well that only turns out to be a temporary hurdle to overcome, and regularly missing time over the past two seasons doesn’t necessarily signal an injury-prone career for the young right back.
After facing City on Sunday, club football again takes a back seat and Bradley joins Northern Ireland for their final two World Cup qualifiers against Slovakia and Luxembourg and everything still to play for as they sit third, three points back of both Germany and Slovakia with first auto-qualifying and second getting a playoff.