It was a whirlwind few hours in the life of teenager Harvey Elliot on Sunday.
The 16-year-old winger signed with boyhood club Liverpool and then went on to make his debut for the European champions in their pre-season friendly defeat to Napoli in Edinburgh.
"To have joined the club that I supported as a boy is a dream come true for me and all of my family and it's an incredible feeling to now officially be able to call myself a Red!" Elliott wrote on Instagram.
Elliott, who made his Fulham debut in the 3-1 League Cup win over Millwall in September at the age of 15 before going on to become the youngest debutant in Premier League history when he played against Wolves in May at the age of 16 years and 30 days.
Shortly after signing terms, the England youth international was named in Jurgen Klopp's squad to face Napoli and was given a 15-minute run out in the 3-0 defeat in Scotland.
Lorenzo Insigne, Arkadiusz Milik and Amin Younes were on target for the Serie A side in front of a sell-out 65,442 crowd at Murrayfield.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp made 10 changes during the second half, including a maiden appearance for Elliott. Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid were among a host of clubs credited with an interest in the teenager, but the lure of joining the club he grew up supporting was too good an opportunity to turn down.
“That’s why he’s here,” Klopp said. “Look, I could say so many positive things about the boy because we signed him. He came here, he decided for us, he could have gone pretty much everywhere but he wanted to be part of Liverpool.
"He already has a few records because of his talent. Now he’s here, let’s work with him. He needs game time and we will see where he gets that, but he’s obviously a fine, fine footballer and that’s the reason why we were really interested.”
“I can’t wait to get started and it will be a truly special feeling to pull the famous red jersey on," Elliott added. "I’ll work as hard as I possibly can for the club and I feel Anfield is the perfect place for me to develop and progress as a player.”
On the Napoli defeat, Klopp said: “We need to do better. I don’t want to look for an excuse – and Napoli started pre-season at the same time as us – but their season starts three weeks after us so they can train nice and smoothly, but we have to work hard in four weeks and sometimes you have heavy legs in games like this as a result.”
