Porto FC

Barry Lewtas is hoping his Liverpool U19 team can showcase their quality when FC Porto visit the Academy in a UEFA Youth League last-16 tie on Wednesday.

Ben was a really important player for us in the group stage, away at Napoli to get it going and then when we went down to 10 men against Rangers, and I think there was a bit of extra motivation there for him as well! The aim always at the beginning of the season is to be competitive in the group and try to finish in top spot. But in the first half of this season the amount of goals we scored, the manner in which we played, I thought it was really exciting, so hopefully we can kind of reproduce that. It is a real opportunity for the boys to showcase what they are about. So, the season is very much kind of split in two so some players who have done well for us in the first part of the season maybe won’t be with us in the second part. We know a lot about them and obviously Vitor [Matos] and Pep [Lijnders] worked there, so we know what a challenge it will be, and it is going to be a tough game.