When Luis Suarez gets angry, it’s usually best to stay out of his way.
Tom Brewitt would certainly attest to that, having seen the Uruguayan’s firebrand temperament up close while at Liverpool.
“The ultimate competitor!” says the former Reds youngster, smiling as he recalls a training-ground incident which he believes sums up Suarez’s unique character.
“I remember we did a drill where the attackers were pressing from the front. It was Suarez, [Daniel] Sturridge and [Raheem] Sterling against a makeshift back four. I think it was me, Flanno [Jon Flanagan], Martin Kelly and maybe Jose Enrique.
“The rule was that we were allowed two or three touches each, and we just had to move the ball between us. And if they won the ball off us, they couldn’t score, they just gave us the ball back and we went again.
“Anyway, our side took an extra touch, and Luis just lost it. He just couldn’t believe the injustice, that our team had got away with taking an extra touch, and for the next 10 minutes he was like a man possessed! He pressed me like a maniac.
“And this is basically a warm-up drill on a Tuesday, four days before a match! That’s him, that’s Luis, the ultimate winner.”
Brewitt spent 10 years as a Liverpool player, though never quite got to make his senior Reds debut. He travelled with the first team once, for an away game at Arsenal in April 2015, but his hopes of a squad place were dashed when Emre Can made a swifter-than-expected recovery from illness.
“I remember being on the bus and my brother was texting me saying it was all over Twitter that Emre was out,” Brewitt grins.
“So, that night, I’m thinking I might be in the squad. Then, the next morning at breakfast, Emre walks in – and if you know Emre, you’ll know what I mean when I say he comes in looking a million dollars, smelling a million dollars, and I just thought ‘Ah, he’s fine!’”
Goal
Brewitt, a centre-back who captained England at Under-17 level, left Anfield in 2017, but has only fond memories of those days, rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names around at Melwood.
“It was a dream come true,” he says. “If you go on my Instagram, there’s a picture of me and Steven Gerrard training together..."
He pauses.
“Well, I say together,” he smiles. “The camera is on Stevie and I’m in the background blurred – but it still went on my Instagram! I was so proud to be there.
“I’d watched him in 2005 lifting the Champions League, and nine years later I’m tying my boots next to him and he’s asking me how my game was at the weekend. That group of players – Stevie, Kolo [Toure], Lucas [Leiva], [Daniel] Agger, [Glen] Johnson, Sturridge – they cared about young players.
"Their standard was high. I remember one session where everyone trained badly, miles off it. It was lashing down and we all came in. Everyone knew it was a poor session, heads were down, nobody saying a word as we took our boots off.
"Jordan Milsom, the fitness coach, comes in and says ‘Right, lads, make sure you all get your protein shots in’, and Stevie stands up, everyone looks at him, he’s p*ssed off, and he goes ‘Any chance of some f*cking shots of enthusiasm out there as well?’ He walked off and nobody said a word for the next hour. That was the mindset of that group of players.
“And the quality was incredible. [Philippe] Coutinho, wow! The ball was stuck to his feet like glue.”
He adds: “I remember a session [in 2014] where the first team were playing United away the next day, and we were doing rondos. It’ll stay with me forever, how much fun they were having.
“It was the best football environment I’ve ever experienced. Being around that, for a local lad, what an experience!
“I look at someone like Trent Alexander-Arnold now and think ‘How special must that be?’ That quote about ‘I’m just a local lad whose dream has come true’, that’s just the most perfect wording. That’s every kid’s dream.”
Brewitt has kept decent company throughout his career – he partnered Joe Gomez at England youth level, and emerged alongside the likes of Harry Wilson, Ryan Kent, Sergi Canos and Sheyi Ojo with Liverpool – but his own dream would have to be chased away from Anfield.
He joined Middlesbrough after Liverpool, working his way to the edge of the first-team picture under Garry Monk. Then, Monk was sacked and, overnight, everything changed.
“It was around Christmas time,” he says. “I remember being sat with my family around and my face must have dropped looking at my phone.
“Tony Pulis was the new manager, and I knew straight away what that meant. I had no chance of playing under him.”
Pulis, he says, was good to him, up front and honest, but Brewitt’s initial hunch was correct. He left Boro after a season, spending the summer of 2018 fighting for his professional career on trial at a host of clubs, at locations as diverse as Nashville and Walsall.
“I played a few friendlies for Walsall,” he says. “We beat Ajax the year they reached the semi-finals of the Champions League. I remember [Kasper] Dolberg played up front.
“We played Villa a couple of days earlier, and [Jack] Grealish played that day. We got drummed!”
With no offer forthcoming, and with his contemporaries from the Liverpool academy kicking on with their careers, Brewitt’s next step was to drop into non-league football with AFC Fylde.
He says: “My first game was against Ebbsfleet, and I played against a lad who was 38, 6ft 4in and knew the game inside out, and knew how to make it absolutely horrible for a young lad!
“You can’t prepare a lad for that at Liverpool’s academy or Middlesbrough’s academy. I’d never come across anyone like that in 10 years. We won that game and I came away with a clean sheet, but it was a hard lesson!”
Brewitt would help win Fylde promotion to the Conference in 2019, and in the process earned himself a return to the Football League with Morecambe. He would make 27 appearances in League Two before the latest hurdle arrived, a global pandemic which would leave hundreds of professional footballers fighting for their futures.
“It was a tough time,” he says. “I hoped I’d be in a strong position, but suddenly you have 1000 players all fighting for a contract, and those who were getting £2,000 ($2,800) a week will suddenly take £1,000 ($1,400), which makes it harder.”
Brewitt played his last game for Morecambe in March 2020 and was released two months later. He kept himself fit, but he admits to some “dark times” as he waited for something to come up.
Eventually, it did. Out of the blue, Gary Lewis, one of his former coaches from the Liverpool academy, called. Lewis is based in Seattle these days, and asked if Brewitt fancied joining Tacoma Defiance, the second team of MLS side Seattle Sounders.
“I was a bit nervous at first,” he says. “But then I thought ‘What an opportunity!' I’d always had one eye on MLS, so I jumped at it.
“I had a Zoom call with the Tacoma manager at the time, Chris Little [he has since been replaced by Wade Webber] and within a week or two, it was all getting sorted.”
Tom Brewitt
Brewitt has family in New York – his middle name is Patrizio, a nod to their Italian heritage – which meant securing a visa was a little less arduous than it might have been. He is currently in the process of securing US citizenship, which would open more doors down the line, should he impress at Tacoma.
He arrived in Seattle in May, and has settled in nicely. He has already seen Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Colorado and Phoenix, and is getting used to life in an entirely new footballing culture.
“I’ve already learned loads and there’s more to come,” he says. “There are sort of three types of team. There’s the likes of Tacoma, LA Galaxy II, who are the feeder teams to MLS.
“Then, there’s the stalwarts of the USL, such as the Las Vegas Lights, Phoenix Rising – [Didier] Drogba’s team – and then, there are the guys who are trying to franchise into MLS, like Cincinnati and Nashville have done in the last few years.
“It is a really interesting mix. I remember speaking to Steven Gerrard about the standard over here when he went to LA. I asked him ‘Where would you pitch it, in terms of the English leagues?’ and he said you can’t really, because it’s so dynamic, and different.
“Sometimes, you’re playing in 41 degrees in the desert, then you’re playing in the snow, then you’re in Colorado, a thousand metres up. So, trying to compare it to England, it’s just impossible.”
The important thing, though, is that he’s back in the game, back playing. He never stopped loving football, he says, and never stopped believing his chance would come.
He’s had to travel 4,500 miles for that chance, but he’s determined to take it.
“I will give it absolutely everything,” he says. “I’ve never wanted anything else out of life but to be a footballer, to earn that job title and to be the best I can be.”
He speaks about his friends, about Wilson and Jordan Rossiter, who is rebuilding his career at Fleetwood in League One, about Ryan Kent and Andy Firth, newly-crowned Scottish champions under Gerrard at Rangers, and about Adam Armstrong, one of the Championship’s top scorers with Blackburn last season.
“My old coach Michael Beale [now Gerrard’s first-team coach at Rangers] always used the phrase ‘Look sideways for inspiration, not for comparison’, and that’s always stuck with me,” Brewitt says.
“I’ve seen the ups and downs of football with my friends. I’ve seen Harry Wilson go to Crewe and have probably the worst six months of his life, but he’s had to go through that to get to where he is now, playing for Wales, playing in the Premier League.
“I see someone like Adam Armstrong, who I’m good mates with, and he’s flying at Blackburn now. He’s worked hard for that.
“Of course, there’s that professional envy, if you like, but that’s healthy. It pushes you on. I just have to keep working and then eventually, whatever route it takes, it’ll happen.”