Milos Kerkez interview: Intense Iraola, Liverpool links – powered by his mum’s cooking

Milos Kerkez has one face, which is partly hidden inside a Nike hoodie right now.

Bournemouth’s 21-year-old rising-star left-back is walking along the south stand of their Vitality Stadium home. A couple of minutes earlier, Tiago Pinto, the club’s director of football operations, passed the same way. 

It is Pinto, along with Simon Francis, Bournemouth’s first-team technical director, who will more than likely be tasked with negotiating the best possible transfer fee for the Serbia-born Hungary international this summer.

Bournemouth signed Kerkez from Dutch side AZ for around £15.5million ($20m at the current exchange rate) in July 2023. Now, after what’s so far been a stellar second season in English football, he is one of Europe’s most sought-after left-backs, with clubs such as Premier League champions-elect Liverpool among his keen admirers.

“No two faces,” Kerkez tells The Athletic from an office inside the 11,307-capacity stadium. “How I am on the pitch is how I am outside of it. Everywhere I am the same. I am not pretending to be something. You always remember where you’ve been, where you are now and you don’t change, you just go with it and stay humble. That is what my dad (Sebastijan) says.”

Last season, Kerkez, a fast and feisty full-back, made a name for himself in a Bournemouth team that achieved the club’s best top-flight points tally (48) during Andoni Iraola’s first season as their head coach. Their 2024-25 has been even more impressive under the Spaniard, who, like Kerkez, is attracting plenty of interest from elsewhere. With nine league games to go, Bournemouth are five points away from beating that record points haul from a year ago and, in doing so, are dreaming of their first foray into European football, sitting just three points behind fifth-placed Manchester City.

A season in which he’s scored twice and assisted five times in 32 appearances has seen Kerkez find another level. During 2023-24, he was adjusting to the league, but now the league is adjusting to him.

“Last season helped me to experience the league and how it is, the speed and physicality of it,” says Kerkez, who was born in November 2003, when Bournemouth were playing the likes of Tranmere Rovers and Colchester United in English football’s third tier. “The manager has trust in you and gives you time to adapt because he knows you have the quality and he knows it is just a matter of time until you pop out and start to do your stuff more.”

Kerkez has started every one of Bournemouth’s 29 league games this season, which have included wins against City (who they will face again at home in an FA Cup quarter-final on Sunday), Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.

But he will miss City’s visit, where a semi-final at Wembley next month will be at stake, after he was shown a yellow card during the win against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the previous round. He was booked, unfairly according to Iraola, after Wolves forward Matheus Cunha hit out at and headbutted him in extra time and was himself sent off.

“I like to be aggressive but in a sporting way — in a football way, I like to compete a lot,” Kerkez says. “As a full-back, you have to do both (defend and attack), but first of all is your defensive game. If you’re not a good defender, you’re not going to play or compete for trophies. 

“Last season I had to work on my defensive awareness, to not switch off. I now stay focused for the whole game and I believe I’m doing both pretty well this season. If you want to be a full-back with Andoni Iraola, you have to be like this.”

When The Athletic sat down with Kerkez, it was two days after his lung-busting performance in the 2-2 away draw against Spurs on March 9. Kerkez said he was still feeling the effects of his exertions, which included a breathtaking 43.6 metre (47.6 yard) sprint from his own half to assist Marcus Tavernier for the game’s opening goal.

By midweek, he said, he’d be recharged fully to the levels which, during childhood, meant he hardly sat still. He would scale tall trees and, as a fan of parkour, enjoyed daring climbs along rooftops in his hometown of Vrbas, Serbia.

In that Tottenham match, Kerkez looked like an NFL cornerback as he tracked the run of ‘wide receiver’ Brennan Johnson and perfectly timed his interception of ‘quarterback’ Pedro Porro’s pass before making the lightning-quick bolt forward, then slowing, looking up and crossing to find Tavernier at the back post.

“That is what wingers struggle with,” Kerkez says. “I don’t leave them space to control the ball outside of me. I stay close to them and at the same time I can follow their run. If they want to run in front of me (they can) because I know I have the speed.

“I just waited for that and I can turn quick, that’s my strong power — being explosive and defending. After that, it was just about staying calm for the first few metres and then I looked for Tav. I saw he was going to make the run, so I put it there and it went perfectly.

“I look for the player (rather than a zone) because in my head I know exactly where the goalkeeper will be. You can see (on that goal) I just looked up at the player, I didn’t look at the box or the goalkeeper.”

Instead of running towards Tavernier to celebrate, Kerkez turned and ran into the arms of Iraola, whose pre-match planning centred on ways to expose Tottenham’s high defensive line. “He helped me before the game to analyse this to get the assist,” Kerkez says. “He is helping everyone to improve as a player and as a person. I’m really thankful he has trusted me.”

It was one of two viral moments involving Kerkez from that game, along with a perfectly timed slide challenge on Johnson inside the Bournemouth box. “People think I am going to give a penalty but I know when I can make a tackle and take the ball away clearly. I really enjoyed that tackle,” he smirks.

Naturally, all this directed a lot of traffic to Kerkez’s social media accounts.

His Instagram, in particular, was filled with messages from hundreds of Liverpool fans asking him to join the club as they look for 31-year-old Andy Robertson’s long-term successor.

“It’s not like I don’t see it (the comments),” he says. “When people say they don’t see stuff if someone says something about you, I think it’s a lie. It’s only if it hits you or not. If someone says something bad, I do my job, and if someone says something good, I just do my job. That’s it.”

Kerkez’s youth career took him from Serbia to Austria’s Rapid Vienna and Hungarian clubs Hodmezovasarhelyi and Gyor, before a video call with a legendary left-back led to a move to Italian giants Milan in February 2021.

Paolo Maldini, who won five European Cup/Champions League finals and seven Serie A titles as a Milan player, as well as playing 126 times for Italy, was their technical director at the time and signed Kerkez. Despite training with the first team, Kerkez never made a senior appearance for the San Siro club and, after being confined to youth football, he left for AZ just 12 months after joining.

Milos Kerkez: « Maldini est le meilleur défenseur central de tous les temps, Theo Hernandez est lui excellent à son poste. » pic.twitter.com/Ze1BoJMgHB

— AC Milan – FR (@AC_MilanFR) February 2, 2021

Does he see his next step as being a return to one of Europe’s elite clubs?

“Yeah,” Kerkez says. “As a kid, you dream to play at the highest level, win the trophies, be on the best teams. 

“These are the things that my agent is on. My dad is on. It is not something that they occupy me with because the season is still going, so there’s no point to talk about anything. There’s games left, the FA Cup is important for us — these are big things. And then, like I say, when someone comes (in for you) you never know what’s going to happen or where you’re going to end up. In the summer, we will see what happens.”

The opinions of parents Sebastijan and Tiijana, who live with him in nearby Poole, and his brothers Rade and Marko — the latter also plays top-level football as a left-back, for Greek side Aris Thessaloniki on loan from Partizan Belgrade — are what matters most to him.

“I play for them. I just want to have made them proud,” Kerkez says. “All the other noise is not important for me, if it’s good or bad. My family is why I’m here today and why I continue to grow.” 

He means that literally. “My mum cooks the best food for me, it is what keeps me healthy to play. She makes all sorts of juices, I have a lot of them in the fridge and I don’t even know what they are,” he laughs.

Kerkez says Iraola has been key to his fine form (George Wood/Getty Images)

His health and fitness regime seems to be working out well for Kerkez, whose time away from football is spent mostly with his family and friends in Poole or back in Vrbas.

His lifestyle centres on being outdoors as much as possible. He has fished since the age of eight, which is around the same time he switched his focus from swimming to football. Does something about the water bring him inner peace? “I’m not even calm when I fish,” he laughs again. “But I like to be there the whole day and just fish.”

Kerkez has had a home built for him in Serbia and the finishing touches will include a padel court so he can compete with his brothers and friends.

“I live simply,” says a player who finished 14th in the voting for the 2023 Golden Boy award, recognising the best young footballer in Europe over the previous year, a place behind Liverpool midfielder Harvey Elliott and one ahead of now Manchester United striker Rasmus Hojlund. “I would rather go home for my vacation and be with family or friends in my hometown than travel to Ibiza, for example.

“I can do everything at home in Serbia, I don’t need to go anywhere else. I built my home there. I am going to have all the fun I need in my hometown, so I don’t need to go anywhere else.”

Kerkez’s love for Serbia is clear, which may confuse some as he represents Hungary, who he qualifies to play for through his paternal grandmother.

Staying loyal paid off for both parties when Kerkez made history by becoming the youngest player (20 years and 221 days) to represent Hungary at the European Championship in 60 years when they faced Switzerland in the group stage of last summer’s tournament in Germany.

“They gave me a chance, and I thought if I get called up then I will play for them,” says Kerkez, who was playing his club football with Gyor in Hungary at the time of his first under-17s call-up and has since won 23 senior caps.

His loyalty, with those nine league games and two potential trips to Wembley in the FA Cup this season remaining, is with Bournemouth for now — but that will be tested this summer.

(Top photo: Caoimhe O’Neill/The Athletic)