Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona: Anfield’s Greatest Night

The squad celebrate in front of The Kop

A year ago, Fabinho Tavares was in Monaco. The man hailing from Campinas in Brazil only arrived at Liverpool in the summer: now, arm-in-arm with his diaspora of teammates, he sings the club anthem as passionately as any of the supporters on The Kop in celebration of the most unlikely of triumphs against Barcelona. With this team, at this moment, the message conveyed by the song is symbiotic: it is a pledge by those wearing the shirt that they will always give everything for the fans, and a promise in return that such commitment will be met with unwavering loyalty.

It is this which makes nights such as these possible: the wall of noise from the first whistle willed Liverpool onwards, simultaneously conveying the fierce pride in the team that is not contingent on the result and yet also the real belief that if anyone can do this it is Liverpool. This faith was not misplaced – against all odds, against all logic, a 3-goal deficit was overturned against the side captained by the best player ever to grace a football pitch.

After the first leg, Jose Mourinho gave his thoughts on Liverpool’s prospects. He remarked, with a wry smile, that at Anfield on European nights they can even score goals that are not goals – this was a reference to Luis Garcia’s ghost goal in 2005, the year Liverpool last went on to lift the Champions League. Sure enough, in another semi-final fourteen years later, a miracle was to occur again.

It would be a disservice to this team, however, to chalk the win up as little more than a freakish anomaly, a case of the opposition or the officials wilting when faced with the Anfield noise and the historic weight that underwrites the claims that it makes. As Klopp said in his post-match remarks, the success was made possible by a convergence of many factors at once: a crucial element, of course, is the sheer talent of the footballers in his team. It can be said with some confidence that this is the best Liverpool side of a generation.

They have now reached back-to-back European finals, and in the league look on track to finish with the third-highest top-flight points tally of all time. The very fact that they outclassed Barcelona in a 4-0 win should speak for itself – only the very best in the world can even stand a chance at achieving such an outlandish result. Messi, Suarez, Busquets, Alba, Ter Stegen – all of these are masters of their crafts, and the list could go on, and yet they were not merely nullified but decimated.

The quality is on display throughout this Liverpool team, from the back to the front. Alisson has proved to be the world class addition in goal that fans craved, and could well be the difference when they return to the final this season to right the wrongs from Kyiv – he played a pivotal role in ensuring Barcelona did not get a crushing away goal, thus contributing to overturning a 3-goal Catalan lead in the Champions League just as he did with Roma last year. There would not even have been a semi-final to salvage had he not produced a superhuman stop against Napoli way back in the final group stage game: football repeatedly confirms the cliché that it is a game of ludicrously tight margins, and elite players can provide the infinitesimal edge that makes the world of difference.

There is no shortage of such players in defence either – indeed, while the Brazilian had to be alert on a couple of occasions to repel Coutinho and Messi, the wall in front of him ensured he was not even as busy as he was at the weekend against Newcastle. Virgil van Dijk deserves all of the plaudits he is receiving: he was already worth every penny of his eye-watering price tag when he signed, but he has since matured into arguably the best defender in world football. When he hangs up his boots, he will be remembered as one of the greats of the game: he is that good. Messi, usually the master of creating pockets of space out of nothing, had no answer to him: the greatest of all time was anonymous.


The Dutch colossus was far from unsupported – Joel Matip has put in the quiet hard yards during this campaign to climb the pecking order, and has showed that he is by no means out of place against the very best. His skill set compliments Van Dijk’s to form a formidable partnership. They are flanked by unquestionably the two best full-backs in the country. Andy Robertson has been a revelation since signing for a meagre £8 million from Hull, and played his part in keeping Barcelona’s superstars quiet before being forced off at half time.  Klopp’s one real mistake over the two legs was leaving Trent Alexander-Arnold out of the first game, but the boy from the academy still had enough time to pull his team back from the brink in a way he has dreamed of since his days of spying on Gerrard at Melwood.


He set up the second, tirelessly closing down Jordi Alba before picking a pinpoint cross worthy of his idol – when Wijnaldum tapped in, the words of “hello, hello, here we go” seemed to echo down the years. The crucial fourth, the goal that decided the tie, also came courtesy of a piece of magic from the full-back; he showed the ingenuity and presence of mind to whip in a quick corner, catching Barcelona unawares and allowing Divock Origi to finish past Ter Stegen. It is hard to encapsulate with mere words what it means to see a local boy who understands the club so intimately playing a leading role in its revitalisation: he is surely an icon in the making.

The local link is something to be cherished, but what is even more precious is the extent to which the wider squad has bought into the ethos of the club. This is not a group of players just doing their job: one need only look again at Fabinho singing his heart out, or Gini Wijnaldum in tears, or the injured Mo Salah turning up to cheer on the impossible sporting a “Never Give Up” shirt. For this, so much of the credit must go to the one factor to which the manager did not draw attention: Jurgen Klopp himself.

He demands of his players what he demands of the fans; he requires a team of believers rather than doubters, a team who lives the game like he does and who can feed off the emotion of it and turn it into results. Those who do not want to commit fully must leave: Coutinho, pulled off after an hour and watching from the bench as the humiliation of his new side was completed, is the living embodiment of this. What remains is a side who will never say die, a group of players and fans who are truly Liverpool regardless of from where they come.  

By all accounts, they had reasonable grounds to write themselves off. In front of the defence the squad looked to be falling apart at the seams: Naby Keita was ruled out for the season just as he started to hit his best form, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain missed out due to another minor setback following his long lay-off, and crucially the talismanic figures of Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah were both unavailable. To those outside of the bubble that Klopp has forged, there was no hope.

Within ten minutes, however, a stand-in had them ahead; Divock Origi has had remarkable peaks and troughs in his time at the club, but his recent fine form has come at such a pivotal time that he has earned the affections of fans for life. The loss of Robertson at the break could have dented this momentum – instead, his replacement scored twice in two minutes to restore parity in the tie at 3-3. Who knows what would have been had Suarez not been so intent on riling up Robertson, and Wijnaldum had never taken the field: once again, ludicrously tight margins. Origi’s second may have been made by Alexander-Arnold, but it still required an excellent finish; he showcased quick reactions to deftly divert the ball beyond Ter Stegen under the most pressured circumstances imaginable. With that flick, the impossible was accomplished.

Barcelona’s role in all this cannot be reduced to the mere victims of Liverpool’s onslaught, and the inquests as to how this was allowed to happen have already started in the Spanish press, but Jurgen Klopp and his warriors will not even be remotely interested in the verdict. In their minds, they know how this happened: a group of world class players gave everything they had, willed on by the fervent belief of 50,000 fans and millions more not in the stadium, inspired by one of the greatest managers of a generation. Sometimes this is enough for silverware, and sometimes it is not, but it is all that can be asked for – one more push in Madrid may well be enough to deliver the trophy that Klopp’s reign so richly warrants.  

 - @JamesMartin013

Coutinho: Thank You and Goodbye

As Philippe Coutinho moves ever closer to swapping Liverpool for Barcelona, many fans have started to turn on him. The anger is understandable – no supporter wants to see a great player leave, least of all through pressurising the club into a sale. However, taking a moment to reflect on things, it is apparent that it would be grossly unfair on Coutinho to let this less-than-ideal end to his time at the club, be it in January or in the summer, cloud his entire time on Merseyside. Faced with a “definitive” club statement saying he was not for sale in August, the Brazilian was left with little choice but to agitate for the transfer or else give up on his dream move altogether. Of course, any Liverpool fan would have preferred him to decide that he was happy to stay at the club indefinitely; this is not realistic, however, so the next best that could be hoped for was that Coutinho would continue to put in world class performances while still a Liverpool player. This he has done: from the moment it became apparent that he would not get his move last summer until the possibility of the transfer re-emerged this month, Coutinho has played the best football of his life, helping Liverpool occupy a top four position and progress to the knockout rounds of the Champions League for the first time since 2008. This is the culmination of five years of quality in a red shirt: he has earned his move, and it is spiteful to begrudge it to him just because he hasn’t shown unwavering loyalty of the sort rarely ever seen anymore.

It highlights the realities of the modern game that Philippe Coutinho is currently one of the club’s longest-serving senior players, behind only Jordan Henderson and Daniel Sturridge. There are only an elite group of three or four clubs in the world who can hold on to their best talent indefinitely: if one of these superpowers comes in for a world class player, sooner or later he will be off. Frankly, Liverpool can be thankful that they have managed to get five years out of Coutinho – his talent has been apparent from his dazzling first six months in the second half of the 2012/13 campaign, and in the past season-and-a-half he has added the sort of consistency possessed by only the top players. In that time, he has helped guide the club to the Champions League and subsequently contributed significantly to getting them out of the group stage as winners: none of the current squad were here when that feat was last achieved, and it cannot be underestimated. Of course, this was a team effort, but Coutinho’s presence has been a constant inspiration to the side: he is one of the most technically gifted players to ever pull on a Liverpool shirt, and on more than one occasion he has salvaged points on his own with his uncanny ability to score from long-range. To forget all of this and turn against him effectively just because he has the audacity to want to make his dream move is petty and naïve: his departure will not erase his contributions.

Of course, there is more to it than that. One thing many fans seem particularly angry about is the manner in which he has tried to leave, as opposed to his simple desire to go to Barcelona per se. However, it is hard to comprehend exactly what such fans wanted him to do differently. Having been made aware of Barcelona’s interest relatively close to the start of the season, given that said interest was only really prompted by the Catalan giants’ shock loss of Neymar in early August, Coutinho made it clear that he wanted to go. This was unfortunately timed, in that the start of the new campaign was just a week away, but it would be illogical to be angry at the Brazilian for not pushing for a move before there was even any concrete interest. In contrast, he was at fault for what followed, if (as seems likely) his ‘injury’ was faked. It is never acceptable to refuse to play for your club – this is particularly true given that Coutinho had committed to Liverpool with a new long-term contract just months previously. However, there was an obvious mitigating circumstance that at least made his actions understandable. FSG released a statement that their ‘definitive stance’ was against selling Coutinho – for him to see that, while knowing that the club he was desperate to play for were bidding for him, would obviously have been difficult to take. It is not hard to grasp why he felt the need to take extreme measures to push for his move. Certainly, his actions have precluded him from ever being mentioned in the same breath as club legends; there is nothing, however, to prevent him from being remembered fondly as a brilliant player who provided five years of great memories.  

This is all the more true when the recent actions of a certain Virgil Van Dijk are considered. He was welcomed as a hero on Merseyside, having pushed hard for his move for the best part of six months – it goes without saying that fans are bound to be happy when great players want to join and upset when they want to leave, but the sheer suspension of logic required to deride Coutinho and celebrate Van Dijk is staggering. The Dutch defender refused to play for long stretches between August and January, and when he did play it was clear his heart was not in it: one report even suggested he remarked “why wouldn’t you want to play here?” to a teammate, having just been soundly beaten at Anfield. The chairman remarked that the protracted saga “left a cloud” over the club, and Southampton now find themselves just one place above the relegation zone. During the same period, Liverpool’s wantaway key asset was producing the sort of football that even draws begrudging praise from bitter rivals, and that ensured Liverpool have had a successful first half of the season. It could be said that getting on with playing at a high level is the least that should be expected, and there is some truth in this, but the conduct of Van Dijk -and, looking elsewhere, Alexis Sanchez – shows that in the context of modern football it is far from a given. Logically, it can either be the case that continuing to do your best is deserving of some respect, or else that Liverpool have signed somebody who has worryingly poor attitude problems: if what Coutinho has done since the summer is the minimum standard to be expected, Van Dijk has fallen below it. Nonetheless, there didn’t seem to be much concern about the attitude of our new acquisition when the signing was announced: there was near-universal celebration, and rightly so. Players pushing for big moves is a part of the game: it is better to accept that this is all Coutinho has done, and remember him for his brilliance, than to get engulfed in bitterness.

Nobody is happy to see Coutinho go. Nobody is happy about the manner in which it has come about. Ultimately, however, he is entitled to want to go to one of the biggest clubs in the world: he has gone too far in pushing for such a move, but that is very understandable. He has got on with playing beautiful football since the summer, on an even more consistent basis than that which he has treated fans to over the course of his five-year spell at the club: this is his legacy, and it is wrong to simply discard it because of a sour ending.

- Follow me on Twitter @JamesMartin013

See @PhantomGoal's counter-argument here: http://fanscorners.com/coutinho-legacy-go-away/

-          

Time to Get Behind Coutinho

There is a lot of ill-feeling towards Philippe Coutinho in the Liverpool fan base at the moment. This is completely understandable: the manner in which he pursued his dream move was unprofessional and potentially damaging to the club at an important time. However, some empathy is surely needed – there are very few players who would not push for a move if Barcelona came calling, and it was only Liverpool’s hard stance that forced him to the extremes of not playing. The argument could be made that this stance was unfair to the player; he has contributed a lot to the team over the past three and a half seasons, and I felt that he deserved to be allowed to go once a reasonable bid was received. Of course, he has a long-term contract, and FSG were well within their rights to point to such a recently-signed 5-year deal; the same is true of Van Dijk, however, and Liverpool fans’ outrage at his desire to move is suspiciously lacking. That said, I’m thrilled that Coutinho is staying, not least because the club’s record at replacing key men in recent years is patchy at best. Now it’s important for the fans to get behind him.

The dislike for his attitude, coupled with Liverpool’s relative success in his absence, has led some fans to play down the importance of Coutinho to the team. This is simply revisionism: he is the best player at the club. Mane is catching him rapidly, but for the time being the Brazilian playmaker is on a level of his own. His vision unlocks defences that nobody else can break down, and the creativity he injects into the midfield three is vital to the long-term success of the team. Furthermore, he is the most capable of producing a ‘moment of magic’ to swing a tight game – Klopp has assembled an attacking unit which contributes (and scores) remarkably equally, but Coutinho is the most capable of winning points on his own.  Talk of leaving him ‘rotting in the reserves’ is frankly absurd – why hang on so determinedly to a prized asset only to refuse to utilise him? Rather he should be unleashed on opponents as soon as possible: our attack has already notched eight in three Premier League games, and it is frightening to think what they could do with Coutinho providing them service.

Such a lethal combination could go on to big things this season, both domestically and in Europe. Particularly given Barcelona’s apparent decline, who can say what Coutinho will want to do next summer? One thing is for sure: regardless of how much the club progresses, he will not want to stay at Liverpool if the fans are on his back all season. At a time where it feels as if seismic shift is taking place amongst the European elite, Liverpool need to be attracting rather than repelling top talent in order to stand a chance of filling the power vacuum and re-establishing themselves as a dominant club force. To this end, fans must try to put this unfortunate transfer saga behind them: loyalty in football is an extreme rarity in the modern game, and as long as Coutinho continues to perform on the pitch he is just as worthy of support as the rest of the team. 

I can still understand why some supporters are unwilling to forgive him. Nonetheless, the form that some of the criticism has taken is unpleasant. Neymar’s comment that Coutinho was in “a moment of great sadness” was met with derision – many seemed angry that he dare be unhappy when he earns so much money. This is clearly nonsense; his wealth does not guarantee him happiness, and by extension his sadness is not illegitimate purely because he gets paid a lot. Some of the abuse has also highlighted the toxic masculinity particularly prevalent in football: Coutinho was visibly emotional during Brazil’s win over Ecuador, and the manner and form of the insults that followed was ugly.  It’s a personal decision whether or not to get behind him, but ignorant insults are far more worthy of criticism than wanting to move to Barcelona.

To sum up, I would strongly advocate getting fully behind Coutinho. He has given a lot to this club, it was natural for him to want to move, and although he went about trying to do this in a less-than-ideal fashion he remains a world class player who we want to perform well for us. It would be self-destructive to potentially prevent him from flourishing. Even if you can’t bring yourself to back him, at least be wary that the form of your criticism doesn’t say more about you than it does him.

Follow me on Twitter @JamesMartin013

Not again… Suarez Saga Version 2.0

This feels all too familiar. The moment Suarez sank his teeth into Chiellini, Liverpool fans everywhere knew what was coming. It’s nothing new- the only real difference to last time is that instead of Real Madrid being the front-runners to take Suarez from us it’s Barcelona. I was tempted to just dig out my article from last time and tweak it a little- it all still applies. Much like last time, everyone seems absolutely convinced Suarez will be off to Spain. But will he?

In short, I have no idea. The only people who have even an inkling of where Suarez will be playing his football (or, more accurately, serving his suspension) next season are the Liverpool transfer committee, and sometimes I’m dubious as to whether they have a clue either! Either way, all is not lost. Contrary to what jealous fans of other Premier League clubs will tell you, Liverpool are by no means a ‘one man team’. Yes, Suarez contributed a vast amount of goals and a sizeable number of assists in the last campaign, but other players also did exceptionally well over the course of the season. Indeed, Daniel Sturridge was second top scorer in the Premier League! If we are to lose the best striker in the league, it is certainly a nice consolation to have the second best ready to step up.

It’s not like we’d be giving Suarez away for free either. If Barcelona (or anyone else for that matter) are to secure the services of Suarez, it will cost them a lot. A conservative estimate of the fee Liverpool might receive for Suarez is £60million, and to be honest he’s probably worth a lot more than that. Armed with this money to spend on top of the rumoured £40million that FSG made available at the start of the window, Brendan Rodgers can make Liverpool’s already excellent team even more formidable. A large investment is needed to sure up our main weak point from last season: the defence. If we can bring in some top class full-backs and centre-backs (no, I’m not talking about Dejan Lovren)  as well as maintaining our attacking flair then it is not unreasonable to suggest that Liverpool are in an extremely strong position to win the league this season. Of course, when losing the 3^rd best player in the world, it is easier said than done to ‘maintain attacking flair’, but just one good signing would ensure we still have a front line that strikes fear into opponents’ hearts. We have been heavily linked with both Shaqiri and Sanchez- imagine Sterling, Coutinho (or Lallana, if we must) and one of Shaqiri or Sanchez in a three behind Sturridge. Tasty.

But all this conjecture is pointless if, as nearly everybody seems to have now written off as a possibility, Suarez stays put. I even saw a ‘Goodbye Suarez’ video posted on YouTube the other day- he’s not gone yet! Everyone got themselves worked up into a similar frenzy last year; you get the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before some moronic fans start their ceremonial burning of Suarez shirts. Liverpool are under no obligation to sell Suarez unless a release clause is met, and even then nothing is set in stone. The club essentially admitted that Arsenal’s insulting bid of £40million plus 1 pound did in fact trigger a clause, but they ignored it anyway. Despite all of his controversies, Liverpool won’t be eager to get rid of their prize asset; unless the price is right, then it’s safe to say that Suarez won’t be going anywhere.

To sum up, whether Suarez goes or not is not only beyond our control but also, in the grand scheme of things, not that big an issue. If he stays, then we have the privilege of having a world class striker playing for us for the majority of the season, and he will doubtless help us to push on and challenge for the title again. If he goes, then we’ll have plenty of money with which to strengthen the squad, which will also undoubtedly stand us in good stead to launch another title challenge.  Either way the club benefits, so let’s all just relax and see how events unfold.

-James Martin

Follow me on Twitter @JamesMartin013