“If this team doesn’t have a few things, like pressing and pace, it loses 50 per cent of its potential. The teams I’ve coached have always fought to win, or they’ve won when they’ve had anger and character.”
“We’re suffering from a clear drop in determination. We’re doing too many things carelessly. We’re soft in just about every aspect: pressing, marking, speed. Please don’t think it’s just a case of getting a few injured players back. We need to rediscover our game and our mentality.”
“We’re soft and floppy and only become more decisive when we go behind. We’re full of fear. At the moment, we’re loose cannons. Only a few players try to move in tandem. And the chaos overwhelms them.”
Jurgen Klopp might be the person who spoke these words if you tried to guess. Liverpool’s chastening 4-1 defeat away to NapoliIn their opening Champions LeagueGroup match last week
Arrigo Sacchi was actually the one who said this, using quotes from his diaries in The Immortals. This book chronicles the highs as well as the lows of his legendary life. AC Milanteam that won back-toback European Cups (1989 and 1990).
Klopp’s Liverpool came to mind on several occasions when leafing through Sacchi’s book. The Italian coach has said it himself, lauding “a fantastic team without any real superstars, a true team, (…) one playing for 11 while other teams are 11 playing for themselves. If they were an orchestra, they would always be in perfect tune and in perfect time”.
Always? Over the past four years, it has felt sometimes like that.
Liverpool has played 158 matches since the beginning of the 2018-19 Season. Premier LeagueMatches: winning 112, drawing 30 or losing 16.
In terms of results, it is a level of consistency surpassed only — in English football history — by Manchester City’s record-breaking performance over the same period. Both clubs saw their standards drop briefly. The exact half of the 16 Liverpool defeats that occurred over more than 4 years came in the early 2021 period, when a debilitating defensive injury crisis turned into a complete psychological disorder.
That is the thing with a team like Klopp’s Liverpool.
When it works, they are indeed an orchestra in perfect tune and perfect time; frenetic as it might appear, their play has always been far more measured and precise than the “heavy-metal football” that Klopp memorable described during his days as Borussia Dortmund coach.
And on the rare occasions when the energy and inspiration desert them, things fall apart — much as they did with that Milan team during the difficult period Sacchi recalled in the winter of 1988-89, when they suffered miserable losses to Atalanta, Napoli, InterCesena. “In terms of awareness and concentration,” Sacchi wrote at the time, “we just weren’t there.”
Periods like these happen to every team. Even great teams go through times like this.
City “weren’t there”, relatively speaking, in the opening months of 2020-21, winning three of the opening eight Premier League matches, before Pep Guardiola and his players rediscovered the fluency that has now earned four titles in the past five seasons.
Liverpool is a great city. Manchester UnitedThe campaigns of teams from the past were more difficult than those of modern champions. Arsenal’s Invincibles of 2003-04? They were a great team. However, their unbeaten streak the next season soon ended.
Klopp has had a rough start to the season with Liverpool. (Photo: Matteo Ciambelli/DeFodi Images via Getty Images).
Sacchi explains in The Immortals how he got out of the Milan slump of the 1980s by pushing his players harder on the training field.
He details his training schedules almost down to the minute. Such attention to detail (“15 minutes of 8×4 possession game on a 35x35m pitch, counting the balls per minute intercepted by the team of four”) is the norm now, but it was exceptional back then.
That 1988-89 season ended in European Cup glory due to, Sacchi says, “the usual reason: ideas and hard work”. Sacchi is right to say that it’s not as simple as it sounds. They can be very difficult to overcome when fatigue and disillusionment set in.
Liverpool is in a terrible state right now.
They seemed to drift into the new season like they were sleeping, with a very lackluster first-half performance. FulhamOn the first weekend. The notable exception was a 9-0 win. BournemouthAnother of the new boys is. They have barely gotten out of second gear since then.
At least 30 minutes in the draws at your home Crystal PalaceAt EvertonThey were forced to work. They were awful for at least 45 minutes during the away defeats of Manchester United and Napoli.
Klopp has many issues to address.
Virgil van Dijk was imperious for so much time, but has now looked ruffledexposing them in one-on-1 situations and giving away a few penalties. Trent Alexander-ArnoldHis detractors wanted him to be the defensive liability he was always supposed to be. FabinhoHe has been isolated at the midfield’s base, and his performances show that he is in dire need of all the support he can get. Mohamed SalahA strangely peripheral member of the right wing than one who can torture opposition defences like he can. Darwin NunezA headbutt occurred on his home debut against Palace. This led to a three game ban that clearly has impacted his integration.
We can talk at length about the symptoms of Liverpool’s early-season malaise, but this doesn’t look like a simple case of making tweaks. Even if it was initially a collection of micro-issues that were compounded with another pile-up injury, it now seems like there is something deeper and wider than that.
Their famed intensity has been lost. Their aura is also missing.
Put simply, a team like Klopp’s Liverpool needs to be playing at full pelt. That mantra about how “intensity is our identity”? This is a well-known fact. It also means that if the standard falls even slightly due to fatigue, confidence, or personnel issues, it is almost impossible to recognize them.
You could easily say the same thing about any team in any sport. But it isn’t always true. Teams that play more conservatively and take on more pressure by defending further and taking in more energy can count on a certain level solidity, even when inspiration is not available.
Those layers of security don’t exist in Liverpool’s game under Klopp. They never were. Their daring has earned them great success over the years.
Every team they’ve faced have known there is space behind full-backs Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson. It’s not difficult to exploit when Liverpool are firing on all cylinders and swarming rivals in the same manner they have done for the past four years.
This approach is based on intense fitness and a burning passion.
Right now, Liverpool look jaded.
Mentally? Physically? It seems like they are both.
Running stats are not enough to tell the whole story.They are often dominant in possession games after being behind. However, it is remarkable that they have been outrun in every match this season.
Marco van Basten of AC Milan and Ruud Gullit from AC Milan win the European Cup 1990 (Photo by Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images).
According to FBref, Liverpool have still recorded a higher percentage of successful pressures — defined as regaining possession within five seconds of applying pressure — than any other team in the Premier League this season (39.1 per cent, followed by SouthamptonCity at 36% and City at 35.5 percent). However, in their two last matches against Everton, and Napoli, these figures have fallen to 27% and 25%, respectively.
That is troubling for a team who are known for pressing and were constantly chasing the goal on both occasions.
Klopp didn’t need to see the data to know The performance of Naples was far below the required standard.
“We were never compact,” he said. “I cannot remember a situation (all game) when we were compact. We didn’t encounter any counter-pressing situations in the 60 minutes. This was because we were too far from everything. That means too wide in possession, we don’t push up with the last line, the midfield is not connected. The problem was we never get close enough to put the opponent under pressure.”
It was a demoralised, lethargic display, and it raised the question of whether that lethargy — perhaps a hangover from a gruelling, deflating end to the last campaign, in which Liverpool played the maximum 63 games, compounded by such a short pre-season due to the winter World Cup — is a symptom of their problems or the root cause of them.
Or, to put it another way: Are Liverpool’s problems secondary to a larger malaise or are they the primary cause of Liverpool’s underperformance?
They have appeared disconnected in almost every game this season. Where once we spoke of “the front three” at Liverpool — invariably Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane, who left for Bayern Munich this summer — we currently see three front players operating too far apart, barely linking up. Luis Diaz has been Liverpool’s best performer so far this season, particularly at times when others have been struggling, but his frenetic approach appears less cohesive than Mane’s style.
They work together in times of transition.
Klopp’s squad had been largely unchanged for four or five seasons, which enabled a group of players signed in their early- to mid-twenties to reach a peak of performance together.
Mane, however, has been replaced by the much underrated Georginio Wijaldum.James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Joel MatipVan Dijk and Salah (Ferdino, Van Dijk, Salah) now have their thirties. Harvey Elliott Fabio CarvalhoAlexander-Arnold and Nunez are both young and vibrant, but the team is not young. It’s particularly tired in the midfield.
Klopp’s approach demands fresh, energetic bodies and minds.
It was tempting to wonder if his team, having won the Champions League and the Premier League the previous two seasons in a destabilizing period, had reached their peak.
It may have been there before.
Many of us were shocked at how they responded last season. They won both domestic cups and reached the third Champions League final in five year. This was in addition to pushing City to the final day of their pursuit of the title. They won 46 games, lost 13 and drew 13 of the 63 in all competitions. They were unstoppable starting in January. Even though Salah, Fabinho, and other players ran on fumes at times, their momentum seemed to have been a result of sheer willpower.
Liverpool must be at maximum speed in order to succeed. Right now, this team don’t look capable of that.
It is perhaps why Klopp found himself talking in Italy last week about whether it might be time to “kind of reinvent ourselves because the basic things weren’t there”, though he quickly clarified that “it’s not that we have to invent a new kind of football”.
It’s not clear yet what reinvention might mean. The switch to 4-2-3-1 Alexander-Arnold playing in the midfield It has sometimes felt this season that Liverpool have suffered from too much reinvention of a successful formula — Alexander-Arnold roaming into central positions, Salah drifting wide, Elliott catching the eye but not able to bring the same solidity to midfield — rather than too little.
Maybe, as with Sacchi at Milan, as with Klopp two seasons ago, it is less about reinventing and more a case of getting back to basics — the basic principles of their own game, that is.
It is concerning that their midfield options lack depth, balance and durability. But, it should improve once they are back from injury. ThiagoHe is a rare combination in energy and poise. Assisting fellow casualties Diogo JotaBack up front should also be beneficial. Nunez will definitely benefit from a series of games now that his suspension is over. It surely won’t be long before Salah is back in the goalscoring groove.
But the greater question is about intensity, collective mentality and whether — and how — Klopp can get this team back to previous levels, firing on all cylinders once more.
That’s the truth. They need to be firing on all the cylinders, and not relying on Salah or Diaz to rescue them.
There have been highly successful teams in the past who have been able to do that, with one star player carrying a few passengers, but for a team built like Klopp’s Liverpool, like Sacchi’s Milan, it needs total commitment all over the pitch.
Without that, “immortals” don’t just look mortal, they look vulnerable in the extreme.
(Top photo by Matteo Ciambelli/DeFodi Images via Getty Images
