'I turned down Real Madrid for Liverpool after what Spanish player did to Mo Salah'

Sergio Ramos's foul put Mohamed Salah out of the Champions League final in 2018

Harvey Elliott turned down a move to Real Madrid as a youngster in order to sign for Liverpool.

The 22-year-old was one of the hottest teenage talents in England as he came through the ranks first at Queens Park Rangers and later Fulham, so much so that Madrid made its interest in the youngster clear.

Elliott was given a tour of the Bernabeu as well as Madrid's Valdebebas training complex, while the chance to meet the then Madrid captain Sergio Ramos was presented to him.

However, Elliott, a lifelong Liverpool fan, snubbed the Spain legend over his foul on Mohamed Salah in the 2018 Champions League final, which forced the Egyptian out of the game.

Elliott attended that final in Kiev with his father, and was clearly in no mood to forgive Ramos for the foul, which had prompted widespread criticism of the center-back at the time.

Just 25 minutes into the game, with the score level at 0-0, Ramos dragged Salah to the ground, appearing to keep hold of the Liverpool forward's arm and landing on top of it, injuring the Reds star's shoulder and forcing him out of the biggest game of his career

Salah went into the game off the back of scoring over 40 goals during his first season at Liverpool, and Ramos's foul was viewed by many as an attempt to deliberately injure Liverpool's biggest attacking threat.

When Elliott was asked in an interview with The Athletic in 2020 whether the story about him rejecting the chance to meet Ramos was true, he responded:

Elliott

"Yeah, that's true. I turned it down because of what he did to Mo."

Explaining how he came to be a Liverpool fan as a boy, Surrey-born

Elliott said:

"As a little kid, I just remember the buzz of walking up the steps inside the stand at Anfield, seeing the lights and the players warming up – what a sight. My heroes were Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez.

"I loved watching them. My dad was a big fan of Fernando Torres and we had a big poster of him in the house.

“Me and my dad always tried to do as many away games as possible.

"We had to tell a few lies to the school and my mum along the way! 'Make sure you get a nice hotel,' she would say.

“The place where we stayed in Kiev in this rundown block of flats was horrendous."