LONG WAIT IS OVER... CHAMPIONS!
LIVERPOOL CLINCH TITLE AS MAN CITY LOSE
JURGEN KLOPP hailed his Premier League-winning side as historic champions, after a “truly incredible” title dream was finally secured.
The Liverpool manager believes claiming the trophy after a 30-year wait and in a season severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic should go down as one of the greatest football achievements. Manchester City’s failure to win at Chelsea confirmed the Reds’ inevitable march to glory. Klopp said: “We have played an incredible season, incredible. “The points we are ahead, it doesn’t happen many times in history. So now more than ever, it is special, and we will be able to look back and say that.”
IN AN ideal world, Liverpool’s 30-year wait would have ended with a victory in front of a packed Kop but, the world being as it is, it was fitting that the title should be delivered remotely.
The longest Premier League season in history has been won in record time by an extraordinary team. Their distant rivals could not stop them and, hard though it tried, the coronavirus could not either.
For Jurgen Klopp, the triumph is the culmination of five years’ work at Liverpool. Last season’s Champions League triumph was a big deal but, with the Premier League, he has delivered the Holy Grail.
Such was the collective yearning for title No19 on Merseyside that Klopp could have been a cyberman bent on bringing Planet Earth to its knees and it would not have mattered as long as he ended the quest.
But it just so happens that Liverpool have lanced the boil with one of the most universally popular managers in English football history.
Klopp’s humanity, humour and common touch – his general good blokery – appeals to people a long way beyond the city’s boundaries. He has charisma, charm, warmth and an instinctive appreciation, through his waterfall of words, of what to say and when.
These are useful life skills for any vocation but for a Liverpool manager trying to remove the heaviest of monkeys from the club’s back, his touch has been golden.
Take this on the pandemic, in his programme notes from Wednesday’s Anfield return against Crystal
Palace.
He wrote: “We all hate that this thing has happened but I am filled with hope for our future because I think as a society, across the world, we showed our best face.
“Ignore for one moment the politicians and their decisions and think how we reacted as people. We were responsible, we showed appreciation for the heroes who risked their lives for us, we learned, we connected, we cared and we realised that love is a more powerful motivator than fear.”
Klopp ‘gets’ it – and it is on a human level where his management has come into his own. He is a tough taskmaster, as anyone who heard the tongue-lashing Trent Alexander-Arnold received from the technical area at Everton on Sunday would appreciate.
But one-to-one he is more than just the boss to these Liverpool players. Midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum said simply: “The players adore him because he cares about them.”
The supporters too. To the faithful, Klopp seems like one of them.
Klopp is the first Liverpool manager since Kenny Dalglish who seems to understand intrinsically a unique city and its premier football club. He identifies with the workingclass culture it is built upon and the emotion it engenders.
The circumstances of football’s return has necessarily toned down the badge beating and fist pumping but his success in uniting the fans behind the squad has been a defining factor of his tenure.
Klopp’s methods, based on speed of ball transfer and aggressive defensive press, have transferred perfectly to the Premier League.
If, when he arrived, Liverpool’s heavy metal football under him was a little too heavy, it has been refined with the help of the smartest of ventures into the transfer market into a perfectly calibrated system.
The football they played against Palace was a joy to behold for those fortunate few inside Anfield.
Sadio Mane’s geometrically perfect final goal was a fitting showcase for a lethal attacking unit but the arrival of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, bought with money from the sale of Philippe Coutinho, has locked down a defence that has conceded 21 goals in 31 league games this season.
Klopp’s German engineering has created and fine-tuned a purring red machine which has no equals.