'War wounds' - Liverpool's Rhys Williams opens up on suffering at Swansea and overcoming racist abuse

It’s fair to say the world has changed since the last time Tottenham visited Anfield.

When they rocked up on Merseyside in December 2020, Spurs were top of the league and Jose Mourinho was their manager.

Only 2,000 fans were allowed in to watch, with Roberto Firmino’s stoppage-time header securing Liverpool a 2-1 victory which Mourinho would claim was “undeserved”, much to the amusement of Jurgen Klopp, his players and staff.

Rhys Williams certainly remembers that night. A Premier League debut against Harry Kane and Son Heung-min? You don’t tend to forget those.

“Yeah, that was crazy!” he tells GOAL, some 16 months on. “Kane and Son were in unbelievable form going into that game, so in terms of preparation I’d say it was my toughest ever game.

“I didn’t know I was playing until we had our pre-match meal, about three hours before kick off.

"Joel [Matip] was down to start, but he had a problem with his back, so I was in. I had to get my head around it pretty quickly.”

He performed admirably – Son scored but Kane was kept quiet – and he would more than play his part in the rest of the campaign too, delivering for the Reds in their hour of need.

As Klopp’s side go for unprecedented glory this month, it is worth remembering the unsung heroes of 2020-21, the ones who kept the train on the track when everything looked like it was falling apart.

Without them, there would be no Champions League football, let alone a quadruple to play for.

Williams is certainly one of those heroes.

The 21-year-old had been on loan at Kidderminster in the sixth tier of English football the previous year, but when Liverpool needed him there he was, he and Nat Phillips forming an unlikely defensive duo as Klopp’s patched-up side won its last five games to secure Champions League qualification on the final day of the season.

There’s a picture from that game, a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace at Anfield, which Klopp absolutely adores.

It shows Williams and Phillips during the post-match lap of appreciation. Both are battered and bloodied, their smiling faces covered in cuts and bruises.

“War wounds!” laughs Williams. “I remember that picture being taken. We were going past the Kop and I was saying to Nat ‘Did you ever think we’d be in this position?.'

“He didn’t think so, and neither did I, given who was ahead of us in the pecking order to start with.

"But it’s every boy’s dream to play for one of the biggest clubs in the world, and I can always look back on the memories and say that I did what I had to do when I was called on.

“I have to thank the gaffer for that, because he could have played others. But he put the trust in me for those last five games, and we did what no-one expected us to do.”

What has happened since offers a perfect example of football’s ups and downs, unexpected and unimaginable highs followed swiftly by disappointing, and at times downright upsetting, lows.

Williams has not played a competitive game for Liverpool since that Palace win.

While Klopp’s side were booking their place in the Champions League final this week, he was playing for the Under-23s in the final of the Lancashire FA Senior Cup in the rather more austere surroundings of Leyland’s County Ground.

He spent the first half of this season on loan, having joined Swansea on the final day of the summer transfer window.

It looked a good move, Williams signing for a team that, in his words, “plays the best football in the Championship”, and one that had allowed the likes of Marc Guehi and Rhian Brewster to flourish in recent seasons.

It didn’t work out. Williams returned to Liverpool in January having made only seven appearances.

“It wasn’t the way I saw it panning out,” he says, philosophically. “But I’ve tried to take as much as I possibly can from it.

"Football isn’t always going to go the way you want it to, so [Swansea] was an eye-opener to the other side, and it’s making me work even harder to make sure it doesn’t happen to me again.”

Williams, understandably, doesn’t have great memories of his time in South Wales, and in particular a game away at Luton Town last August, during which he was subjected to racial abuse by a home supporter.

He was substituted at half-time, the incident reported immediately to Bedfordshire police. Swansea supported him, Liverpool too.

Jordan Henderson was one of the first to contact him, but as Williams speaks publicly about that day for the first time, the pain and the anger in his voice is clear.

“It really affected me,” he says. “I’d had it before with England when we played Mexico, but this was worse. It was directed straight at me and I could see the intention.

“I’m not going to use it as an excuse, but I didn’t feel in the right frame of mind to be on the pitch for a good few weeks after it.

“I don’t think playing helped me. Unless you’ve experienced it, I don’t think you understand.

"The worst thing is to be thrown back into the limelight, where everyone is coming up to you saying ‘It’ll be alright.' You just want to be left alone.

“I was low on confidence and my head wasn’t really on football. That’s what I love doing, and if I can’t even do that without this happening, then it’s almost like what’s the point? Where can you go to escape it?

“You go on a football pitch to compete, to entertain, to make people proud, and this happens. It was a big kick in the teeth, and for a good few weeks I wasn’t enjoying my football anything like as much.”

Thankfully, that is no longer the case. Williams is back with Liverpool, training with the senior team while playing for Barry Lewtas’ U23s.

He’s happy, even if, by his own admission, it took him a month to adjust to the “insane” level of those sessions with Klopp’s quadruple-chasing side.

“It’s amazing,” he says. “Every single player in that squad trains as they play, so the quality and the tempo of the sessions is ridiculous.

"It’s 100 miles an hour, you don’t get a second on the ball. You have to know what you’re doing, two passes before you receive it.”

He is able, as a central defender, to offer a unique insight into the challenge of marking the likes of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Luis Diaz, though it is another forward, Roberto Firmino, who he says is his toughest opponent.

“Playing against him is an absolute nightmare!” he says. “You either have to leave him to drop off and then he turns and makes you look stupid, or you go out with him and then someone is in behind you getting a ball over the top off Robbo (Andy Robertson) or Trent (Alexander-Arnold).

“But then if you get there a split-second too late, he’s going to turn you. You have to arrive as he is taking a touch and try to knock him, make him take a bad touch or knock it back into midfield where someone can nick it. That’s the only way to defend him.”

He expects to go out on loan again next season, and is already looking forward to proving a few of his doubters wrong.

“I just want to play as many games as I can,” he says. “I know that it’s far too soon for me to be thinking about getting ahead of these great defenders that we have, so the plan is to get a loan that works for me, to find a manager that will back me and trust me.

“The experiences of the last 18 months will help me. Swansea was disappointing but it’s gone now, and it doesn’t have to define me. I know what I can do and what I’m capable of.

"I just need a chance to show it now.”