This season we are watching genius at work, and some key elements of that genius have been hidden from our view.
As Reds, one of the many joys we regularly experience while watching this fantastic squad is that we have a slew of players who are among the best of the best at their positions. Mo Salah. Virgil Van Dijk. Trent Alexander-Arnold. Thiago Alcântara. Fabinho. Alisson Becker. All of them are arguably the best in the world at what they do for a living, and we get to watch them do it over and over again. Throughout the last several seasons, it’s been a beautiful, breathtaking, joyous experience to watch their genius at work.
And of course we also get to watch the genius Jürgen Klopp orchestrate all of it, and then conduct from the touch line.
But that orchestration includes not only what we see in front of Jürgen, performing for our eyes on the pitch, but also the selection and oversight of a massive backroom staff that we do NOT see – all of those staffers toiling and grafting with little recognition from us. But make no mistake, there is genius at work in that backroom. A lot of it.
Keeping LFC Fit: An Enormously Challenging Task
This season’s astonishing run toward an unprecedented quadruple could never have happened without the nearly equally extraordinary season that has been put in by Liverpool Football Club’s current sports science team, led by the Head of Recovery and Performance, Dr. Andreas Schlumberger, and Head of Fitness and Conditioning, Andreas Kornmayer.
Together, the two Andreases face the daunting task of maintaining and overseeing the fitness, recovery, and rehabilitation of a team that plays the heaviest schedule of any team in world football. This season the Reds will play the maximum number of games that they were eligible to play. The Reds have already marched onto the pitch 61 times – 37 in the Premier League, 12 in the Champions League, and six each in the EFL and FA Cups. Through it all, they have amassed a ridiculous record of 49 wins, 9 draws, and three losses across four competitions. And, of course, they still have two matches left to play.
The Reds’ fixtures have come nearly as relentlessly as Liverpool themselves. For most of the season, the Reds have played on the weekend, played in mid-week, and played again on the weekend. Rinse and repeat. This outlandish schedule takes an enormous toll on professional athletes, but the Reds’ squad has nonetheless stayed extremely fit throughout.
This Season’s Triumph vs. Last Season’s Disaster
I compared Liverpool’s injury data for this season versus last season at transfermarkt.us. During the 2020-21, the first-team squad lost a horrific 270 games to injuries. This included 45 games lost by Virgil Van Dijk (only five games lost this season); 139 games lost by Joe Gomez (1 game this season); and 23 games lost by Joël Matip (2 games this season). This season, the total number of games lost was only 139, despite lengthy injury spells for Harvey Elliott (30 games), Roberto Firmino (26 games), and Thiago (23 games).
For much of February, March, April, and May, Jürgen Klopp had the luxury of choosing from a fully-fit squad, or very close to it. This was particularly extraordinary because it happened during the closing months of the season, when the congested schedule overlapped with the overwhelming pressure of competing to win trophies in four separate major competitions.
It’s Not Just the Frequency of the Games, It’s Also the Intensity
Moreover, the unique fitness challenge facing the sports science staff for this team is not limited to how often the Reds play. As we know, Jürgen Klopp’s teams do not play in the same style as other teams. From the first kick to the last, for 95 minutes or more, Klopp’s men harry, hustle, and harass. They run, they sprint, and then they run some more. Klopp’s defense starts at the front, and every player on the pitch plays a critical role in creating and maintaining near-constant pressure on the opposition when LFC lose possession.
The combined intensities of the fixture list and LFC’s manically-intense tactical approach create a nightmare for Liverpool’s sports science staff.
For additional context, we should rewind to Klopp’s first season at Liverpool, when he jumped into the job with both feet in October 2015, and immediately demanded that his team up its intensity on the pitch. Just two months later, Liverpool had already benefited tremendously on the pitch from Klopp’s presence. But, the players were starting to drop like flies, in large part due to the increased demands on their bodies from Klopp’s approach. In December, Klopp declared after a match that “hamstring is the shit word of the year for me.” By that point, stars Philippe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge had both suffered pulled hamstring muscles, along with others, including James Milner, Jordan Rossiter, Kolo Toure, José Enrique, Simon Mignolet, Martin Skrtel, and Divock Origi. A month after that, Coutinho reinjured his hamstring, and Jordon Ibe and Dejan Lovren also suffered hamstring injuries.
Immediately after Klopp’s arrival, the team’s fitness levels and their program for recovery, rehabilitation, and fitness were simply not good enough to keep players healthy when playing football the Jürgen Klopp way.
Changing Times: the Arrival of Kornmayer and Schlumberger
Oh, how times have changed.
The next summer, Klopp poached Kornmayer from Bayern Munich, where Kornmayer had headed the first team’s fitness program for fifteen years. The next season Liverpool saw fewer injuries, but the challenges posed by the English fixture list – especially during the winter months of December and January – still took their toll.
But the thing with geniuses is, they’re really good at learning stuff.
Year after year, Kornmayer tweaked his fitness and conditioning program to provide maximal protection from injuries. Then, at the end of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, LFC hired another German specialist to help Kornmayer protect players from the massive stresses of playing for Klopp’s Liverpool.
Dr. Andreas Schlumberger came into LFC to fill the newly-created role of “head of recovery and rehabilitation,” after having worked for a number of clubs in the Bundesliga, including both Bayern Munich and Klopp’s own Borussia Dortmund.
Initially, the new team of Kornmayer and Schlumberger faced a challenge that overwhelmed even their amazing talents – protecting players from the combined pressures of Klopp’s brand of football in the singular context of a compressed schedule forced by the pandemic itself. Worse yet, Liverpool’s management rolled the dice in the offseason after the 2020 season, and chose to enter 2020-21 with only three established senior center backs on the roster.
The 2020-21 season resulted in an awful shitshow from a fitness perspective, with cascading effects on the entire season. By January 2021, all three of LFC’s center backs had suffered season-ending injuries, and Klopp was patching holes in the defense by using midfielders Jordan Henderson and Fabinho as cover in the center of defense. Without Fabinho and Henderson in midfield, this created further imbalances throughout the team. Nonetheless, at the last Klopp & Co. managed to right the ship sufficiently to squeak into a Champions League position. And this offseason, Kornmayer and Schlumberger went to work again.
Learning From Past Mistakes
Did I mention that geniuses can learn from past mistakes? Well, they can also meet misfortune and adversity with resolve and pluck.
Schlumberger spent much of last season and the summer overseeing the rehabilitation of key personnel Virgil Van Dijk, Joël Matip, and Joe Gomez. For the Reds to win any major trophies in the 2021-22 season, at least two of those stalwarts needed to get back to their top fitness levels nearly immediately. Manchester City would not wait around while our center backs limped their way back into top form.
Together with the rest of the sports science staff, Schlumberger and Kornmayer have worked tirelessly to prepare the Reds to run the gauntlet of four competitions this season.
The results of this work have been nothing less than fantastic.
Sports Science Has Been Critical to the Quadruple Push
Over the past three months, with the levels of pressure notching ever higher as the Reds push deeper into the pointy end of the season, this Reds squad has had very few injuries that caused players to miss matches. Repeatedly during recent weeks, Klopp has been able to choose from a full or nearly full squad when choosing his lineups.
And, we can certainly infer that Schlumberger, Kornmayer, and the rest of the sports science team have also played a critical role in advising Klopp about the need for personnel rotation throughout the season. Here, they will have almost certainly focused both on large data sets reflecting how typical athletes can withstand certain stresses, along with considering the individual characteristics and fitness histories of individual players.
Starting as an outfield player three times in a week for a Jürgen Klopp team creates enormous stress. But, some players run more than others. And some players are far more resilient than others. Thus, we see Virgil Van Dijk, Mo Salah, and Trent Alexander-Arnold playing nearly every game.
And now, as the season reaches its pulsating, dreamlike climax, we see Klopp shortening his rotations to allow all of his superstars more time on the pitch in the most critical games of the season. We can be confident that, behind the scenes, Schlumberger and Kornmayer are providing the data that give Klopp license to roll the dice with these players to maximize the team’s effectiveness. Of course, yesterday’s Southampton match was a notable exception to the “rotation shortening.” As I discussed in the Preview for that match, there just wasn’t sufficient time for those who played 120 minutes on Saturday to recover sufficiently by Tuesday. And, of course, the sports science staff would have been telling Klopp exactly that.
The additional minutes that key LFC players have been able to play this season has been essential to the Reds’ ability to persevere across four competitions and provide us the thrilling hope of a quadruple.
Savor the moments. Relish the journey. Burn it all into your memory.
And as you do, give some thanks not only for the geniuses that you see, but also those you do not.
