Dominik Szoboszlai‘s career so far has taken him from Hungary to Austria, Germany and England. Here David Lynch speaks to the Liverpool FC No.8’s former coaches in an exclusive look at the impressive story – so far!.
Perhaps because he was so enamoured by it, it is Jesse Marsch who best sums up the sense given by so many of Szoboszlai’s former coaches that he has always been in possession of a confidence bordering on arrogance.
The American coach has fond memories of his first meeting with 18-year-old ‘Szobo’ following his appointment as Red Bull Salzburg boss in 2019, and recalls being blown away by a player whose remarkable talent was matched only by his own conviction that he would fulfil it.
This quality has clearly stood Szoboszlai in good stead during a meteoric rise that continued this summer with a £60 million move to Anfield, where he has quickly emerged as the beating heart of what Jurgen Klopp is terming ‘Liverpool 2.0’.
But that outcome was by no means guaranteed back when he was defying cultural norms during a crucial career stop in the Austrian Bundesliga.
Marsch tells This Is Anfield: “I’d spoken to Szobo a little bit before but the first day I showed up, you could see he had such confidence about him. It’s borderline arrogance, but it’s real.
“He just believes in himself and he’s always believed that he was going to be a big player. I’m drawn to those kind of personalities, I like guys that come with a bit of arrogance to them.
“Germany and Austria are a little different, but in German there’s a word, ‘demütig’, and it means humble. And if you say to somebody anything like, ‘He should stay humble’, it’s an insult because in German they don’t like arrogance.
“But I’m different, I’m American! So I was drawn to him immediately.
“He was still young, a bit immature, and still needed some guidance in terms of how to use his confidence to help benefit him as a player.
“But I watched him play the year before, I really liked him and I thought he had a big future with how I was going to move the team forward.”
Strict, focused and born for this
It is Szoboszlai’s father, Zsolt, a former professional footballer who played in his native Hungary and in Austria’s lower divisions, who is most frequently credited with forging that cast-iron self-belief by those with knowledge of the family.
Székesfehérvár locals also remember Dominik growing up in a strict environment that owed much to his father’s determination that his own career in the game would be surpassed by his son.
It is already well known that Szoboszlai was made to wear smaller boots than he required in order to improve his dexterity, but less so that he was rarely given permission to socialise with friends as a child whose main focus had to be training.
Zsolt’s bloody mindedness even stretched to opting out of Hungary’s traditional youth development pathway – a decision many felt was subsequently justified by the lack of obvious return on dictatorial prime minister Viktor Orban’s £2 billion investment in football since 2010.
He and his son had been coach and player in the youth ranks of local club Fehérvár FC (then known as Videoton due to a sponsorship agreement with a local electronics manufacturer) until Zsolt was involved in a disagreement that prompted a parting of the ways in 2007.
Rather than seek out another academy, Szoboszlai Snr instead elected to form his own, named Fonix Gold, with strict selection criteria and a focus on coaching on smaller groups to increase one-to-one contact.
Szoboszlai thrived in this environment, though one rather remarkable story from this time concerns a consensus forming locally that he would never be quick enough to make it at the elite level.
Of course, that myth did not survive long, with the young midfielder’s exploits in his father’s academy soon earning him recognition at international level.
It was at that point a 15-year-old Szoboszlai came onto the radar of Michael Boris, a German coach then in charge of Hungary’s U19s and about to step up and lead the U21s.
Boris recalls: “Bernd Storck was the sporting director of the Hungarian federation and he said, ‘You have to have a look at this young guy’.
“Two weeks before he had played with the U17s and I took him with the U19s to Armenia.
“The second game, he came in for some minutes and, from this time, it was clear that if I was going to be the U21s coach then I had to take him as soon as possible.
“[He had] to play with older guys because, compared to the others in the U17s, you could see that he was different.
“First of all, the set-pieces, the free-kicks, the technical footing was amazing, but I think at this moment he is one of the guys who is running the most in the Premier League and you could see this in the youth also.
“Normally, a typical No. 10 is not working defensively and prefers to play forward, but he did everything even though he played in an offensive position.”
A ‘crazy’ and ‘clever’ genius
As well as this technical prowess, Szoboszlai was already showing his trademark confidence in attempting to take responsibility from his more senior teammates.
Boris says: “We had players like Daniel Gazdag, who now plays for the senior national team and is very successful, so we had a lot of good midfield players.
But Dominik, every free-kick he went to the ball and wanted to shoot!
“I had to explain that there was an order and that the older player has to try it and then, if it’s not good, then he can.
“But at that age he was a little bit naughty – but it was positive. And you could see the quality in his shooting free-kicks.
