Liverpool, at long last, are premier league champions
By: Schwartz
Tell the world…
We are Liverpool
Champions of England.
That sentence, spoken yesterday by manager Jurgen Klopp, is one that Liverpool fans have dreamed of hearing for three decades. And a dream is all it was, until it became reality yesterday afternoon, when Manchester City fell to Chelsea in London, confirming what we knew for months would eventually be the case: Liverpool have ended their 30-year drought, and are the 2020 Premier League Champions. It wasn’t an easy road, and hardly anyone could have predicted just how Liverpool would get here- over the past year or so, the Reds have secured both their first English title of the Premier League era, and a historic sixth European cup, and all it took was....
Enormous sales of their three best players (Suarez, Sterling, Coutinho) to allow the club to bring in high-level talent, but still have the 14th-lowest net spending in the Prem during the Klopp era
a failed Balotelli experiment
a journeyman Egyptian winger who broke the scoring record en route to two (and counting) Prem Golden Boots
a centre-back who the secured a Prem Player of the Year award
a 97-point second-place campaign
two losses across two Premier League seasons
a backup striker scoring a double against the then-best side in the world
a defensive midfielder scoring from 25 yards out against City
a teenage, Liverpool-born-and-raised right back with the passing acumen of Andrea Pirlo
a keeper who was so embarrassing in club football’s biggest match that Liverpool leadership spent a record fee on his replacement
a manager whose brilliant career had been plagued by questions about winning big games
LeBron James picking up an ownership stake in the club
a 100+ day suspension of Prem play due to a global pandemic
Pretty routine stuff. Given all of the randomness and ridiculous bad breaks that have paved the road to this Championship, it’s actually pretty ironic that Liverpool were able to finally achieve their goal by running away with what figures to end up as the largest league-winning points margin in Prem history. But any loyal Scouser would tell you that all of the heartbreak, all of the waiting- of course the decades-long drought, but also the unexpected delay of the completion of this season- was worth it, and they wouldn’t change a single twist or turn that brought them here. When Manager Jürgen Klopp was first introduced to Reds Nation in 2015, his message was that the club had to change “from doubters to believers,” and this sentiment couldn’t have been more true. The team was in the midst of a pair of mid-table finishes, and was little more than a year removed from Steven Gerrard’s infamous slip- there was very little belief that Liverpool could be anything other than cursed. But Klopp and his players built a new team culture from the ground up, one focused entirely on bringing silverware back to Anfield. And in the past year, that’s all they’ve done, securing the Prem and UCL trophies, as well as a UEFA Super Cup and the team’s first Club World Cup. Finally, with the massive weight of three title-less decades lifted off of their backs, you can expect the Reds to continue on this mission over the next few seasons, as they have plenty of youth to continue their dominant run. It’s worth noting that this is their 19th English top-flight title, just one fewer than their bitter rivals Manchester United, and the Reds certainly know that fact- they’ll be back with a vengeance next year in their title defense, and will be pushing to equal their longtime foes.
Unfortunately, the feeling is somewhat bittersweet. Anfield will not yet come to life for a glorious guard of honor, and the true celebration will have to wait, as the fans and club cannot be together right now due to the global pandemic. One of the things that has always made Liverpool special is the unity between the two groups, the assurance that you’ll never walk alone, and I have absolutely no doubt that when the opportunity arises for the proper title-winning festivities, it will be nothing short of spectacular. Rarely ever has such a big club struggled so mightily within their own domestic league, or experienced the adversity that Liverpool have had to overcome to achieve this title. Whether it’s been an unprecedented health crisis, historically elite competition, injuries to key players, or even fluky slips and goal line saves, they’ve navigated it, and it has all served to make this moment even sweeter for every Liverpool fan across the world, even if they must celebrate on their own for now.
It’s certainly a strange time. But today, the only emotion you’ll see from any of the players, fans, and especially Klopp himself is joy. The Reds’ cheerful, steady, and endearingly normal leader’s mission is complete- Liverpool are Champions of England, and there are absolutely no doubters left- if you watch this club play for even one match, you can’t be anything other than a believer. And that’s part of what has made them such a joy to follow over the past couple of seasons. The style of play, of course, is absolutely electric. The Reds feature a hyper-talented front three who seem to communicate telepathically, a midfield inhabited by a revolving door of inventive and extremely different contributors, and a defensive group featuring a stunningly dominant centre-back, and the most unique pairing of passing, and even scoring, fullbacks in Europe.
Still, we’ve seen a lot of teams play great football in this era. What has set these Reds apart is their genuine love for the game, the club, and for each other. You can feel it in every glimpse you get into not the footballers, but the people that are a part of this club. There have been countless moments and resulting permanent mental images over the past couple of seasons that have endeared myself and others to these men. The tears Mo Salah shed after he dug deep to fight through the pain when he was injured in the 2018 UCL final, but ultimately couldn’t go on. That same day, after the loss, when the boss himself wasn’t lamenting the loss, but rather singing with fans in the airport late at night, celebrating the amazing things that the club had done to get to that point. During the iconic comeback vs. Barcelona, when Mo Salah couldn’t participate due to injury, but stood at Klopp’s side all game, sporting a shirt that fortuitously featured the phrase “Never Give Up,” and Naby Keita, stuck recovering at home, watched the game on TV in his full kit, just like we all did as kids.
The social media banter between Andy Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, James Milner and others, as well as the hilarious team Yoga sessions that Klopp led for the team during quarantine. All of these memories have served to lead myself and so many other fans of Liverpool and of the sport to truly care for these players and their manager. I’m thrilled to see Liverpool Football Club lift the Premier League Trophy, but I’m far happier to see this group of people become champions together. We wouldn’t have expected this end to the story when Mo came over from Roma, when Mane or Virgil came from Southampton, when Klopp came from Dortmund, and certainly not during the mass exodus of star talent leaving from Anfield- nobody would have dared to imagine that the drought might actually be in its final stages. But still, over the past few years, the people that are a part of this club, through their actions both on and off of the pitch, have gradually turned everybody who has witnessed their rise, both those inside and outside of the club, from doubters into believers. After becoming the first Premier League manager to ever win both the league and the Champions League titles in his first 4 seasons at a club, Klopp called this end to his club’s mission “the best thing he could ever imagine,” and from where I’m sitting, it’s pretty hard to disagree.