Fair warning: I’m an unabashed Jürgen Klopp fanboy. But there are still enough facts woven into the gushing below to permit you to make your own judgments.
All of us celebrated the day that Liverpool announced the signing of German Jürgen Klopp as the new manager. We were very, very excited. One of the top managers in all of world football was coming to OUR club! Liverpool may have been suffering, then sitting tenth in the Premier League table, but help was on the way. Still, none of us could have expected that he would bring so much. That it would be THIS awesome. Like Bill Shankly before him, Jürgen Klopp has transformed Liverpool Football Club and the fan culture that surrounds it. He has changed all of us from doubters into believers.
The Initial Press Conference – October 2015
The next day after the announcement of Klopp’s hiring at Liverpool, he arrived for his initial press conference as manager. The lights were bright, the room was crowded, and the buzz of anticipation spread from the room itself to living rooms in Liverpool and far beyond. We are talking lots and lots of hype. And yet, somehow, as so often seems the case, on that day Jürgen Klopp not only met those super-hyped expectations, but he exceeded them.
Klopp’s physical presence alone is enough to command most rooms, including the press room at Anfield on that first day of work. He stands 6’3”, with gangly limbs, short brown-to-dirty-blonde hair, a carefully-cultivated five-o-clock shadow, and stylish, horn-rimmed glasses. He wears a neat solid black dress shirt. He smiles often, to magnificent effect. Klopp’s smile reaches mythical proportions. The smile is giant, magnetic, and infectious. It reveals gleaming, bleached teeth that go on for days. The smile is a show-stopper.
But the show does not stop there. Not at all.
Klopp’s English is accented, and he starts by apologizing for it. But his words flow with ease. He speaks firmly and passionately, but mostly quietly, raising his volume only in key moments.
The first question comes from a club employee at LFC TV, and Klopp knows it is coming. But as rehearsed as that answer probably was, he blew us away from the outset. When asked, “What attracted you to this challenge?” Klopp replies, “It’s the biggest honor I can imagine to be here. For me, it’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. And given this opportunity to try to help, in a situation that’s NOT so difficult, like all the people in this room feel, I think. It’s not the perfect moment, of course. But I feel it’s a good moment to come here. So, I feel really proud.”
The LFC TV reporter then gently reminds Klopp of the question: “What attracted you then, to the challenge here at Liverpool?” The answer was spectacular, because it showed us from the very start that Jürgen Klopp had fallen in love with Liverpool football and Liverpool fans before he had ever arrived. “The intensity of the football. How the people live football in Liverpool and Liverpool fans all over the world. So it’s not a normal or usual club. It’s a special club.”
From there he only got better once he moved on to the unrehearsed answers to questions he had not yet heard. “It’s real important that players feel a difference from now on. Of course they have a different coach, from another country. But they have to think that they can reach the expectations of all the other people. Of all the fans, of all the press, whatever. If somebody wants to help LFC, you have to change from doubter to believer. It’s a very important thing.”
When asked about the weight of expectations from the fan base, Klopp lights up. He says that the players and the supporters have been walking around with 20-kilo backpacks weighted with comparisons to the club’s glorious past. He says that the focus should be on what is happening now. “We will start by trying to play very emotional football. Because I think this is important at Anfield. … You can’t have the best atmosphere in the world and then play … [here Klopp indicates, with body language alone, the concept of dull, flat, unenergetic, and boring football. You know the kind – the football that Roy Hodgson coaches]. … We have to do it together, we have to work together, if we have problems, we have to use the power of the team. It’s time to restart.”
The next questioner tells Klopp that he is already an extremely popular figure in America, then asks, “José Mourinho came here and described himself as the ‘Special One.’ How would you describe yourself?” Klopp laughs. “I don’t want to describe myself. … I’m a totally normal guy… I’m “the Normal One,” maybe if you want this.”
Klopp finished with a bit of prognostication. “If we want, and we’re willing to work for it, and we’re patient, this can be a special day. Then we can start in a very difficult league, with opponents who are big and bigger and bigger. And in a special Liverpool way, we can be successful. We have to wait for it, of course. I don’t want to say we have to wait another 20 years. I think that, if I sit here again in four years, we have won at least one title. If not, the next one – Switzerland. [huge smile]”
What do I take from all of this – especially with the benefit of seven years of hindsight? The big takeaway for me is that Klopp came to Liverpool with a deep understanding of the club’s history, its culture, and its connection to the city and the worldwide fanbase. In fact, he came here because of this history, culture, and connection. Fans of Robert Heinlein will understand that, from day one, Jürgen Klopp grokked Liverpool and its famous football club. He loves the emotional aspects of football. In his heart, he is as much a fan as he is a coach. Taken together with his incredible skills as a manager, he is a near-perfect fit for Liverpool.
Klopp’s Background and Experience in Germany – Mainz and Borussia Dortmund
Born in June 1967 and raised in the mountainous Swabia, Black Forest region of southwest Germany, as a kid Jürgen Klopp learned quickly to love football. Klopp’s father, Norbert, was a traveling salesman and an amateur goalkeeper who encouraged his son to play both football and tennis. Klopp played as a youth on academy teams for several clubs.
Mainz 05 – Humble Beginnings
In 1990, when Jürgen was 23, he signed a semi-professional contract to play with Mainz 05, a club that was then in Germany’s second division, 2. Bundesliga.
Klopp would remain at Mainz for his entire professional playing career, which was unremarkable. Klopp describes himself as having “second division legs and a first division brain.” He started as a striker, but later became a center back, which he played most of his career.
Klopp played eleven seasons at Mainz. In 2001, halfway through Klopp’s last year as a player, Mainz was facing relegation to the third tier of German football, and had quickly burned through three managers. Mainz President Harald Strutz approached Klopp to propose that he become the team’s player-manager for the remainder of the season. “Jurgen Klopp was full of passion, a normal man with a special personality. You could see in all the games that he was a leader. You could see the supporters were so impressed with his personality…. We decided to make him the manager and that was such an explosion of emotion for all the people living in this city. And it started the greatest time for this club.” Mainz won six of its next season games to pull clear of relegation.
The next season, Klopp put down his playing boots (“boots” is Brit-speak for “cleats”) and became the full-time manager at Mainz 05. Perhaps fate had paved this path in Klopp’s career – Mainz are one of a handful of football clubs whose fans often sing the anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
In both Klopp’s first full season as manager and the next, Mainz finished the season agonizingly close to promotion to the Bundesliga (Germany’s first division equivalent of the English Premier League), Indeed, the 2002-03 season ended with Mainz missing out on promotion in the 93rd minute of the final match of the season.
Still, Klopp immediately reassured the club’s players and fans that the team would come back stronger and try again. They did just that, earning promotion to Germany’s top flight the very next season in 2004. Despite Mainz having the smallest budget and smallest stadium in the Bundesliga, Klopp managed to keep them for three seasons before they dropped back into the second division.
Borussia Dortmund: Jürgen Klopp Vaults to International Stardom
Klopp’s success with a very small club at Mainz did not go unnoticed. In 2008, Germany’s second-largest club, Borussia Dortmund, bet on Jürgen Klopp to restore some of their former glory, and lured him away from his beloved Mainz 05. Again, fate apparently stepped in – Dortmund supporters have also famously embraced the anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Despite being one of the largest clubs in Germany, Dortmund probably still appealed to Klopp’s underdog mentality. To understand Dortmund’s relative position in Germany, you should know that Bayern Munich has nearly always dominated the Bundesliga. Bayern is one of the world’s biggest “superclubs,” right up there with Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and any of the Premier League clubs. As of 2022, Bayern has won 31 Bundesliga titles. Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Monchengladbach are tied for second-most titles, with only five apiece.
Thus, although Borussia Dortmund is probably the second-biggest club in Germany, they are much closer to the trailing pack than they are to the leader.
In the 1990s Dortmund had a very strong team, winning back-to-back Bundesliga titles in 1995 and 1996, as well as a European Champions League title in 1997. But despite challenging Bayern Munich’s title as German kings in the 1990s, during the 2000s Dortmund fell on hard times. In the three seasons leading up to Klopp’s hiring, Dortmund had twice barely avoided relegation to Germany’s second division, and a financial crisis hit the club so hard that it had to cut players’ salaries across-the-board by 20 percent.
In 2008 Dortmund hires Klopp, and Jürgen’s magic then begins to capture the world’s attention. In Klopp’s first season in 2008-09, Dortmund won the German domestic tournament (the “Supercup”) by beating Bayern Munich in the title game.
By 2010-11, Klopp’s Dortmund transformed the balance of power in Germany, at least for a moment. That year Dortmund won its fourth Bundesliga title. They followed that up by repeating as league champs in 2011-12, while also again besting Bayern in a domestic cup. Then in the next season (2012-13), Dortmund finished second to Bayern in the league, but advanced all the way to the Champions League Final, where they ironically faced … Bayern Munich, which beat them 2-1.
By this point, Jürgen Klopp and his flashy, aggressive style of “heavy metal football” had become world famous. Klopp’s teams put on quite the show for fans and neutrals alike, and so did Klopp himself. While his team was pressing and harassing opponents, sliding into tackles, and launching lightning-fast counterattacks after winning the ball, Klopp was yelling, gesticulating, contorting his face with Jim Carrey-esque plasticity, kicking every ball, and then celebrating with mad ferocity after nearly every goal. Fans could get their money’s worth just by keeping an eye on Klopp’s antics in the “technical area” along the sideline. That’s where most managers stand – but Jürgen Klopp instead runs, leaps, rants, contorts, and cavorts. 
After back-to-back league titles and reaching the Champions League Final in 2011-2013, Klopp’s Dortmund team had one more very strong season in 2013-14, finishing second in the league and advancing to the Champions League quarterfinals. But the bottom fell out in the 2014-15 season. The team struggled nearly all year, and were mired in a relegation position for most of the winter. In April, Klopp announced that he would be leaving Dortmund at the end of the season.
By October of that year, he would be in Liverpool, beginning the process of turning doubters into believers.
2015-16 – The First Klopp Season and the Precedent of Football Miracles
Once at Liverpool, Klopp did not promise immediate success, and he did not achieve it. But he did promise that “we will start by trying to play very emotional football.” On this front, he achieved in spades.
The players Klopp inherited that season included a few big talents, such as Roberto Firmino, Jordan Henderson, Philippe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge (plus Divock Origi, whose huge goals at huge moments eventually made him a club legend despite his limited skillset). But, compared with the teams Klopp would build over the next few years, that first team was very weak. Nonetheless, Klopp believed that “emotional football” could lift even mid-table talent to play top-level football – perhaps not consistently, but at least in certain moments and in certain matches.
And so it proved. But even before Klopp’s team began to play with its characteristic intensity, Klopp demanded that the supporters do their part to lift the players when they most need it. Just a month after Klopp arrived, Liverpool were in a tight, 1-1 match against Crystal Palace at Anfield, when Palace scored the go-ahead goal in the 82nd minute. Many in the Anfield crowd gave up and headed for the exits, weary from having watched their team give up points late in matches many times over decades. Palace won the match, and afterward Klopp expressed his displeasure with the fans who left the match early. “After 82 minutes, I saw so many people leave the stadium. I felt pretty alone at that moment. We decide when it is over. Between 82 and 94 minutes, you can score eight goals if you want, but you have to work for it.”
Soon, Klopp’s team were living up to their end of the bargain – at least in patches. Just five weeks after he arrived, Liverpool traveled to the Etihad for a Premier League match and blew league leaders Manchester City out of the water, 4-1. A few months later, Liverpool would advance all the way to the League Cup final, where they fell to that same Manchester City team in a penalty shootout. Still, doing well in the Premier League itself requires consistency across 38 matches, and Klopp’s talent in that first squad was not built for that type of success, Liverpool’s league performance that season was very up-and-down, and they finished in eighth place with only 60 points.
Nonetheless, Klopp’s brand of “emotional football” carried Liverpool a long way in the cup competitions, where playing well at key moments in key matches can be a great recipe for success.
That season I was lucky enough to be at Anfield to witness one iconic moment in the development of Jürgen Klopp’s relationship with Liverpool fans. On December 13, 2015 Liverpool met mid-table West Bromwich Albion. Similar to the Palace game a month earlier, the teams were battling in a 1-1 draw when West Brom scored a late goal in the 73rd minute to take the lead.
This time, however, the fans stuck around and got behind the team as they worked to come back. And, this time, the magic happened. Divock Origi equalized for the Reds in the 96th minute, and the noise in the stadium was deafening. Indeed, in the two additional minutes after the game-tying goal, pushed on by the crowd the Reds fought hard for the winner, but didn’t quite get there.
Immediately after the match, Klopp gathered his team in a line facing the Kop, where I happened to be standing that day. As a unit, the team applauded the fans who had stayed and pushed the team forward. Many criticized this display as “celebrating a draw against a mid-table team.” But Klopp knew better. He had asked the supporters for help. They had delivered. Klopp believed he and the team should show their appreciation. Klopp was right. Many Liverpool supporters cite that moment as a key point in Klopp’s bonding with the fanbase.
By far, Klopp’s stamp on that first team was most visible in the Europa League. The Europa League is a cup competition (that is, a tournament) that is the European equivalent of college basketball’s NIT. It’s the “consolation” tournament for those teams that were not good enough to qualify for the Champions League. Indeed, at the end of the group stage of the Champions League, teams that finished in third place in their group don’t qualify for the knockout stage of the Champions League. But those third-place Champions League teams don’t go home. Instead, they are then moved into the knockout stages of the Europa League, which just reinforces that competition’s status as the consolation tournament.
But, despite its “little brother” status, the Europa League is still filled with mostly-solid to very good teams. By the time you reach the knockout stages of that tournament, you are typically facing very good teams who are then currently playing at their best. In the parlance of European football, they are in “good form.”
In Klopp’s inaugural season at LFC, the Reds advanced to the Europa League knockout rounds, where they defeated German club Augsburg in the Round of 32. In the next round, Liverpool drew archrivals Manchester United [BOOO! HISSS! THROW PEANUTS!]. If ever there were a matchup to inspire intense emotions in Liverpool players and fans alike, this was it. As Klopp himself told the media, Manchester United vs. Liverpool is “the mother of all games.”
In the first leg at Anfield, Klopp’s boys dominated the first half and led 1-0 at the break, based on a penalty kick from Daniel Sturridge. Klopp’s emotional football was in full force, as The Guardian’s match report describes how the Reds “tackled and chased with the energy and vigour the German considers essential for his teams. They were quick to the ball, strong in the challenge, and crucially, they also had players, most notably Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho, who could add wit and refinement to their attacks.” In the second half, United adjusted and initially improved, but the Reds rallied to reinforce their upperhand. In the 73rd minute, Jordan Henderson crossed the ball into the box, and a poor clearance by a United defender fell to Adam Lallana near the bottom-right corner of the penalty area. Lallana deftly rolled the ball back toward Firmino in the center, who deftly placed the ball into the top corner of the net. Manchester United keeper David DeGea had no chance. The Reds thus won the first leg 2-0.
At Old Trafford just a week later, Klopp’s Reds sealed the deal in the first half. Manchester United opened the game well, and struck first with a penalty kick in the 32nd minute, to bring themselves within one goal on aggregate. But the Reds closed the door on them just a few minutes later, with a captivating goal by Philippe Coutinho. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. But Liverpool won the “cup tie” (this is the term the Brits use to describe a matchup in a tournament, whether it occurs in a single match or across two legs) by outscoring Manchester United 3-1 on aggregate.
The victory over their rivals landed Liverpool in the quarterfinals of the Europa League, where they faced Jürgen Klopp’s former club, Borussia Dortmund.
Talk about a media frenzy.
And, true to form, faced with this overhyped confrontation, Klopp and his team somehow managed to exceed expectations. Calling what happened next “dramatic” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Miraculous is a much more accurate term.
Building Liverpool’s Reputation for “Football Miracles”
Now seems an apropos moment to mention a complaint Tweeted by an anonymous Everton fan in December 2021:
They can have more enjoyable moments in a week of football than we’ve had in 30 years. Everton are the most miserable club to support. A combination of us being unable to have any high whatsoever compounded by them getting football miracles on a weekly basis season after season
— K (@K00168516) December 23, 2021
Of course, Liverpool already had established itself as a miraculous club long before Jürgen Klopp arrived. The 2005 Champions League Final has been hailed as “The Miracle at Istanbul.” And Steven Gerrard had gained international notoriety throughout his career for thwacking in shots from 25 yards in key moments of critically-important matches.
But Klopp took Liverpool’s reputation for generating miracles to a whole ‘nother level. And it all started in his first season, up against the team he had just left – a team whose fans still regarded their recently-departed manager with unfettered adulation.
Upon Klopp’s departure from Dortmund at the end of the 2014-15 season, the club hired Thomas Tuchel (now the manager of Chelsea in the Premier League) to replace him. Tuchel had also followed Klopp at Mainz 05 (with just one season in-between the two managers). At Mainz, Tuchel carried the tiny club to an even higher echelon than Klopp – finishing the 2011-12 season in fifth place in the Bundesliga and qualifying for the Europa League.
Now at Dortmund, Tuchel was trying to replace the irreplaceable Klopp yet again. And, again, by the time Liverpool and Dortmund met in the April 2016 quarterfinals of the Europa League, Tuchel had been smashing it. Dortmund were in a close title race in the Bundesliga (they ended the season a very close second to Bayern Munich), and they had been destroying the competition in the Europa League. They came into the matchup (“cup tie”) against Liverpool as fairly heavy favorites to advance.
The teams drew 1-1 in the first leg in Germany, setting up a battle royale at Anfield, which has long been famed for its atmosphere on “European nights,” when the team plays under the lights. On April 14, 2016, the Anfield faithful delivered once again, in a match that will go down as one of the best in Anfield history.
Dortmund came out fast, scoring two goals in the first 9 minutes of the match, giving them a 3-1 lead on aggregate. Worse yet, because Dortmund had now scored two “away goals” on its opponent’s pitch, they took control of the tiebreaker advantage of the “away goals rule.” From 1965 to 2021, European tournaments, including both the Champions League and the Europa League, had instituted a rule designed to discourage away teams from playing too conservatively. The away goals rule said that, in a two-legged cup tie, if the teams finish with the same number of aggregate goals, then the team which has scored the most “away goals” will advance to the next round.
Liverpool had only scored once in Germany, so Dortmund’s quick two goals at Anfield meant that Liverpool needed to score at least three more goals to advance. After only nine minutes, the Anfield crowd were shellshocked, and things looked very bleak for the Reds.
The score was still 0-2 at halftime. After the break, Divock Origi gave the Reds a glimpse of hope with a goal that made it 1-2 in the 48th minute. But to their credit, Dortmund bounced straight back, scoring a third goal in the 57th minute to make it 1-3, which seemed to shut the door on Liverpool advancing to the next round. After that third Dortmund goal, the Reds needed to score three more goals in the last 33 minutes of the match. In other words, they needed a miracle.
Jürgen’s boys delivered exactly that.
Fittingly, Liverpool’s little Brazilian magician, Philippe Coutinho, started the comeback in the 66th minute with a brilliant, arrowed finish into the bottom corner from just outside the box, making the score 2-3. Twelve minutes later, center back Mamadou Sakho scored from a corner to make it 3-3.
At this point, Anfield had become a frenzied cauldron that was none too friendly for the visitors. The two teams were now tied on aggregate goals, 4-4. But, the away goals rule meant that the Reds still needed one more score in order to advance. The Anfield crowd were determined to push them to get it.
To get a sense of just how crazy Anfield became in this match, it’s worthwhile to check out what Thomas Tuchel said in the immediate aftermath. “It was not logical,” said the Borussia Dortmund manager. “I can give you a description, but not an explanation.”
Pushed by the crowd to the pinnacle of “emotional football,” Klopp’s men got it done. In the 91st minute, James Milner lofted a cross toward the back post, where center back Dejan Lovren leaped over the defense and hammered a header into the back of the net.
With that, Klopp and his team set a precedent that would be repeated many times over – Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool teams have regularly delivered football miracles to LFC supporters all over the world. In hindsight from 2022, as that anonymous Evertonian put it, it now feels as if Liverpool get “football miracles on a weekly basis season after season.”
Despite the miracle in the quarterfinals, Liverpool ended coming up just short in the Europa League that season, losing in the Final to Sevilla, which won that tournament for the third consecutive season.
But the precedent was set, and Klopp pushed the club forward toward new miracles, while constantly making doubters into believers.
2016-17: Bringing in a New Star
Klopp’s first full season as manager was arguably his quietest. The Reds didn’t play in European competition, and they hadn’t yet made enough progress to contend for the Premier League title. But Klopp did begin the long squad-building process with a bang, by signing wide forward Sadio Mané.
Mané immediately strutted his stuff, debuting against Arsenal on the league’s opening day, and doing this. Notably, after scoring this incredible goal, the new Liverpool forward celebrated by immediately running to his new manager and jumping onto his back. Mané led the team in scoring in that first season, quickly establishing himself as a fan favorite and a key element in Klopp’s fast-striking Liverpool squad. He would go on to become one of the 25 best players in Liverpool history. His 120 goals for the club rank him 14th on that all-time LFC list. We sadly bid him goodbye at the end of last season, and Mané will be greatly missed, on and off the pitch.
In addition to bringing in Mané, this season Klopp also gave young LFC Academy star Trent Alexander-Arnold his first Premier League start – in Old Trafford, of all places. The 18-year-old local, who had joined Liverpool at age 6, performed well. Trent earned a regular place in the first-team squad that season, and by February of the following season he became the regular starter at right back.
Finally, 2016-17 was also notable as the first season for midfield stalwart Gini Wijnaldum and center back Joël Matip. Both would go on to play key roles in the future success of the team.
In truth, the 2016-17 season was short on miracles, although the team did manage to seal Top Four status on the final day of the season, qualifying LFC for what would be a very memorable run in the Champions League in 2017-18.
2017-18: Mo Salah Arrives, and the Reds Seek Champions League Glory
In the summer of 2017, Liverpool chased Southampton’s star center back Virgil van Dijk, without success. They also worked quite hard to secure the transfer of RB Leipzig star Naby Keïta, and ended up getting a deal that provided that Keïta would come to Liverpool only after playing one more season at Leipzig. Nonetheless, despite these high-profile disappointments, that summer transfer window would prove to be one of the biggest in Liverpool history, because Klopp secured the services of both Mo Salah and Andy Robertson.
Robertson was a relatively unheralded left back who had played at recently relegated Hull City. After Robertson signed with Liverpool, Klopp brought him into the team slowly. Alberto Moreno remained the starting left back until Moreno suffered an ankle injury in December. Like Wally Pipp giving up his starting spot to the young Lou Gehrig, Moreno was never a regular starter for Liverpool again.
With Mo Salah in place on the right wing, Liverpool had secured the three-man forward line that would become one of the most lethal in all of world football. Mané on the left. Roberto Firmino in the middle. Salah on the right.
In Salah’s first season he scored the crazy total of 44 goals in 52 appearances, which is second in the LFC record books only to Ian Rush’s 47 goals scored in 1983-84. Salah’s 32 Premier League goals that season set the record for a 38-match season (Alan Shearer and Andy Cole share the record for a 42-game season with 34 goals).
In January, the club’s patient transfer strategy paid off, as they finally secured the signing of Virgil van Dijk.
Van Dijk’s arrival immediately solidified the team’s defense and sparked a long run in the 2018 Champions League. Eventually, the Reds made it all the way to the Final in Kyiv against Real Madrid – club football’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. Real Madrid had won the Champions League title both of the preceding two seasons (and three out of the previous four). The experienced Madrid squad won the match, but — just as Klopp had accurately predicted to Mainz’s fans that they would come back stronger after twice failing to gain promotion to the Bundesliga on the last day of the season – Klopp and the Reds vowed to get back to the Champions League Final once again.
And so they did, just 12 months later.
2018-19: Another Miracle at Anfield Helps the Reds Become European Champions
And the football miracles kept coming. After Istanbul, perhaps the greatest miracle in club history occurred on May 7, 2019, in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal at Anfield. In the first leg in Spain, Liverpool had competed well, but had been unfortunate, and Barça came into the second leg with a seemingly-insurmountable 3-0 lead. Worse yet, both Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino were injured and unavailable to play in the second leg. Nonetheless, Mo showed up at Anfield that night wearing a T-shirt with a clear message in extremely large print: “Never Give Up.”
Mo’s teammates followed his instructions without fail.
Liverpool were up against the world’s best player in Lionel Messi, surrounded by one of the world’s best teams. They needed four goals to win, and they also needed to prevent Barcelona from scoring any goals at all. In other words, Liverpool needed a football miracle.
They got it.
Divock Origi’s early goal gave the crowd hope, and the Reds went into halftime up 1-0. Left back Andy Robertson suffered a first-half injury, which forced starting midfielder James Milner to switch positions to replace Robertson. Gini Wijnaldum then came on to take Milner’s spot, in one of the most impactful substitutions in Liverpool history.
Within 11 minutes of hitting the pitch, Wijnaldum had scored two goals to draw Liverpool level with Barcelona on aggregate, 3-3. From there, Barça threatened to score, but could never quite make it happen.
Then, in the 79th minute, it happened. The moment for which this blog is named. The Reds won a corner, and a sharp ballboy (Oakley Cannonier, who last season scored 41 goals as a forward for LFC’s U-18 Academy team) quickly made sure that Trent Alexander-Arnold had a ball. Trent put the ball down while Barcelona’s defenders were still setting up to defend the corner kick. Trent started to walk away, then saw Divock Origi standing ready near the middle of the penalty area. Alexander-Arnold returned to the ball with two quick steps, rifled it to Origi’s feet, and Origi placed the ball into the top left corner, past Barça’s embattled goalkeeper. Famously, LFC TV’s announcer Steve Hunter shouted, “Corner taken quickly … ORIGI!”
This was one of the best moments in the lives of millions of Liverpool fans all over the world, and that certainly includes me. I have enjoyed hundreds of wonderful moments as a sports fan in my life, and several that I will never forget. But this one tops the list.
That football miracle gained greater importance a few weeks later, when Liverpool went on to win the Champions League Final against Tottenham in Madrid.
Fittingly, Divock Origi cemented the victory with another late goal. In Liverpool’s entire Champions League run that season, which spanned 12 matches, Divock Origi took only three shots. All three were in the second-leg of the semis and the Final. All three were goals. All three are among the most important Liverpool goals in its history.
In that same season, with newcomers Fabinho (defensive midfielder) and Alisson Becker (goalkeeper) adding to the team’s defensive solidity, Liverpool battled to the bitter end with rivals Manchester City to win the Premier League. Liverpool finished with 97 points. At the time, this was by far the most points any Liverpool team had ever secured in a league season (their next-best total was 86 points in 2008-09). But it was not quite enough, as Man City held onto its title by earning 98 points, one point more than Liverpool.
Klopp and the Reds vowed to come back the following season to get it right.
They did just that.
2019-20: The Reds Break the 30-Year League Title Drought
Having won the European title the season before, the Reds came into the 2019-20 season determined to bring Anfield its first Premier League title, and Liverpool’s 19th top-flight league title, after a 30-year dry spell.
Liverpool took control of the league table early, and they never looked back. Across the first 27 league matches, Liverpool won 26, drew one, and lost none. At that point, Liverpool stood 22 points ahead of Manchester City in the table. Shortly thereafter, the pandemic hit. This both delayed Liverpool’s inevitable title, and sadly meant that the team would not be able to celebrate the title together with the fans.
It came one year later than Klopp had originally predicted in his first press conference in 2015. But he had delivered the promised league title.
2020-21: An Injury-Ravaged Season Punctuated by a Football Miracle
The next season was a weird one. Football across the world was played mostly behind closed doors, as the pandemic raged on. Liverpool entered the season light on center backs after Dejan Lovren left the club. Klopp planned to use Fabinho as the fourth center back as needed. It turned out that he would be needed in that position far more than Klopp could have ever anticipated.
First, Virgil van Dijk went down with a season-ending ACL tear caused by a reckless sliding scissor tackle by Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. Joe Gomez became the next victim a few weeks later, when he suffered a season-ending patella tendon injury while competing for England in a friendly. Finally, in late January the Reds lost for the remainder of the season, their only remaining senior center back, Joël Matip, to a serious ankle tendon injury.
At that point, Liverpool had zero senior center backs on the roster.
For much of the season, Liverpool struggled along by taking their two defensive midfielders – Fabinho and Henderson – out of midfield and making them both play center back. With the team woefully out of balance, Liverpool lacked any scoring punch, and lost an incredible six consecutive home league matches at Anfield, directly on the heels of having won 68 in a row!
Eventually, however, Klopp changed tactics, gambling a bit by playing two youth center backs — Rhys Williams and Nat Phillips – and returning his midfielders to what had been a woefully-imbalanced midfield.
With ten league games remaining, Liverpool were in sixth place, five points out of the Top Four. Klopp’s gamble paid off. By May 16, going into the 36th league match of the season against West Bromwich Albion, Liverpool had won five and drawn two of its previous seven matches.
Still, they needed a win against West Brom, and on the day it very much appeared that they would not get it. The Reds fought and clawed to get a winner, but going into stoppage time the score remained deadlocked, 1-1.
Finally, in the last of five minutes of stoppage time, Liverpool won a corner. After some indecision among the coaching staff about whether to send goalkeeper Alisson up as an offensive attacker, Alisson finally sprinted ahead to the opposition penalty box.
Then, in the most unlikely of scenarios, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s corner kick found Alisson’s head, and the ball arrowed into the corner of the net. There was no crowd to celebrate, but the players themselves went nuts, and NBC commentator Arlo White screamed, “Alisson the goalkeeper has saved Liverpool’s season!”
Liverpool then went on to win its last two matches and secured a spot in the Champions League for 2021-22.
2021-22: Fighting for the Quadruple
Having qualified for the Champions League by the skin of their teeth, Liverpool made the most of their chance. They entered the season with a chance to win four trophies, and they damned near won all of them.
Strangely, Liverpool faced Chelsea in both of the domestic cup finals. Strangely, in both the League Cup (a//k/a the “Carabao Cup”) and the FA Cup, Liverpool and Chelsea played to a nil-nil draw after 90 minutes. Strangely, in both instances Liverpool won the cup against Chelsea in a penalty shootout.
The first of the two penalty shootouts – in the League Cup – was arguably Liverpool’s best “football miracle” of the 2021-22 season. Traditionally, Klopp has played youth, second- and third-string players in the League Cup. He did so for the first several matches in 2021, but once the Reds reached the quarterfinals, Klopp began starting more of the first-team players.
Except for one. At the start of the season, Klopp had promised backup goalkeeper Caiomhin Kelleher that the League Cup was “his competition.” And Klopp remained true to his word.
Kelleher started in the League Cup Final, with first-team keeper Alisson on the bench.
Just before the penalty shootout started, Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel (yeah – the same guy who lost to Klopp while coaching Dortmund in that crazy miracle game in the 2016 Europa League quarterfinals) decided to switch his goalkeepers. Apparently, Chelsea’s backup keeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, has a better record of saving penalty kicks than the Chelsea starter, Edouard Mendy. Mendy had played spectacularly in the match, but Tuchel played the percentages and subbed in Arrizabalaga.
Penalty shootouts are always high drama. But this one was very extra. All five of both teams designated penalty takers scored, so at that point each team had to pick a new penalty taker until one team scored and the other did not.
In order to be eligible to take a penalty in a shootout, a player must have been in the game when time elapsed and the shootout was set to begin. And, once a player takes a penalty in a shootout, they can’t take another one unless and until the sudden death rounds go through the entire team and come back around to people who have already had a turn.
One by one, every “outfield player” (that is, the players other than the goalkeepers) for both teams stepped up to take penalties. All ten Liverpool players scored. So did the 10 Chelsea players.
That meant that it was the keepers’ turn to take a shot.
First up was Liverpool’s young backup, Caiomhin Kelleher. Ignoring Arrizabalaga’s efforts to heckle him and get into his head, Kelleher calmly sent the Chelsea keeper the wrong way, while stroking the ball into the opposite top corner. It was an absolutely beautiful penalty.
Finally, it was Kepa’s turn. Faced with the pressure of seeing what his counterpart had just done, Arrizabalaga attempted to strike the ball similarly ferociously. But instead of zinging into the top corner, Kepa’s shot sailed way over the goal and into the stands. Liverpool had won the cup, and Caiomhin Kelleher was the hero, despite allowing ten consecutive penalties to get past him!
Football miracles are delightful.
Liverpool nearly got another such miracle in the last week of the Premier League, as Aston Villa almost stole points from Manchester City to hand Liverpool the title. Instead, just as in 2019, Manchester City finished one point ahead of Liverpool in the league table – winning by a tally of 93 to 92.
Similarly, Real Madrid eked out a 1-0 victory over Liverpool in the Champions League FInal. Thus, despite playing in every possible match and coming within one game of gathering all four available trophies, the Reds had to settle for winning the two domestic cup trophies last season. Liverpool were disappointed to walk away with neither of the two “big” prizes – the Premier League and the Champions League.
But Klopp & Co. have vowed to come back strong this season.
You know what that means.
Have your doubts? Stick around. Jürgen will make a believer out of you.
