Liverpool is “Home” Now for Joe Gomez

When Joe Gomez made the move from Charlton Athletic to Liverpool in 2015 he was just 17 years old and had spent his entire life growing up in London and at the club where he broke through to the first team after training with them since he was ten years old.

In the early going, understandably, he thought of those places as his real home even while he was playing and training on Merseyside. After eight years with the Reds, though, Gomez says he now thinks of Liverpool as his home.

“I think of the city and the way that now it feels like home,” Gomez noted. “When I first came, home was London and that’s all I knew and that’s where I’d be on a day off if I could, but now Liverpool is probably always going to be ingrained in me for life.

“Just because of the on-the-pitch, off-the-pitch experiences, family, and things that I’ve gone through here. It’s been that long a time that it’s home and it feels that way now.”

Not all of those experiences have been good, with a string of injuries sidelining Gomez after a breakthrough 2019-20 season when he played 43 total games and appeared to establish himself as first choice partner for Virgil van Dijk.

The club and manager Jürgen Klopp, though, have always maintained that Gomez has a place in the team, and the now 25-year-old defender was named captain against Derby County in the League Cup recently.