Sepp van den Berg recalls nerves of training with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané at Liverpool

Brentford defender Sepp van den Berg has revealed how overwhelmed he felt during his first days at Liverpool, admitting he was “really shaking” when he trained alongside stars such as Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah and Senegalese winger Sadio Mané.

The Dutch defender opened up about his early experience at Anfield while reflecting on his move from PEC Zwolle to Liverpool as a teenager.

Van den Berg joined the Premier League club at the age of 17, arriving with high expectations but also dealing with the pressure of stepping into a dressing room filled with world-class players.

Speaking to DAY1, the defender explained that he initially struggled to believe Liverpool were interested in signing him.

“I remember perfectly my parents saying: we need to talk ,” he said.

“They then told me that Liverpool were interested. I didn’t believe it. I said, ‘This has to be a joke, right?'”

The transfer quickly became reality, with the young centre-back leaving the Netherlands to begin a new chapter in England.

Van den Berg admitted the scale of the move only truly hit him when he travelled for his first training session with the club.

“I remember very well getting into a rental car with my father for my first training session there. I didn’t have my driver’s license yet at the time.”

At Liverpool, the teenager suddenly found himself sharing the training ground with some of the biggest names in European football, including Virgil van Dijk, Salah and Mané.

“I’m not kidding: I was really shaking. Van Dijk, Salah, Mané: I was really shaking because of them and I was wondering: do I really have to do this? From the very first training session, we had to go through physical tests.

I went back to my hotel that evening and, while taking a bath, I threw up all over the bathroom. I think that was it: the tension, the fatigue.”

The comments offer a rare insight into the pressure young players can face when joining elite clubs at an early age.

Despite the difficult start, Van den Berg continued his development within Liverpool’s system before eventually moving on to continue his career elsewhere in the Premier League.

Now at Brentford, the defender appears more settled and experienced, but his memories of training with Salah and Mané remain among the strongest moments from the beginning of his professional journey.