United humiliated
A “freak result” resuscitates Klopp’s Liverpool
By Sebastian Schneider
03/06/2023 10:51 am
Liverpool FC has been reeling through the season so far. The former stars no longer deliver great performances, and there are doubts about Jürgen Klopp. But then: the big bang. The Reds finish off Manchester United. For one coach it is a satisfaction, for his opponent a disaster.
The timing is striking: Just in time for the giant summit, Jürgen Klopp was in a great mood again. He joked again at the press conference ahead of the Premier League game against Manchester United. “My biggest motivation for a win is that I don’t have to look at your faces and answer all those pretty stupid questions afterwards,” he told reporters. It’s pretty unlikely that he had any idea what was going to happen on Sunday.
Because in the duel of the giants of English football, Liverpool dealt with the eternal rival Manchester United 7-0. Klopp himself had raised the game to the very highest level in the said press conference. “The whole world will be watching. I would be watching if I wasn’t here and I’m really looking forward to it,” he said during the week. “It’s the game. It’s massive.” The “Welt” game became a humiliation for the history books: Liverpool has never won this duel so high, for Manchester United it is the heaviest defeat in its Premier League history.
It didn’t look like it for a long time. Liverpool got into the game better, but ManUnited was not completely defeated. On the contrary: the game was completely open up to the 43rd minute. Only then did winter newcomer Cody Gakpo make it 1-0 for the Reds. What happened in the minutes that followed is difficult to analyze. Liverpool scored six goals after the break, three of them in the first five minutes after the restart. “The second half was crazy,” Klopp later said on Sky. “When football is as fun as it is today, then you make seven.”
Suddenly the weak in form shone
It was the return of the “old” Liverpool: Suddenly they played quickly and directly forward, won balls through their pressing – and apparently had a lot of fun doing it. The ballast of the past few months was released and the characters of the previously botched Liverpool season shone. About 80 million center forward Darwin Núñez. The Uruguayan didn’t have a particularly good start to the season and was particularly notable for failing to convert chances. Against United he scored twice, which is worth seeing. Or Gakpo: The Dutchman impressed at the World Cup in Qatar, but has not yet kicked at Liverpool. He scored twice against United.
Mohamed Salah also flourished again. The Egyptian struck twice to become the Reds’ record goalscorer with his 129th Premier League goal. His run before the 3-0 (66th minute) was characteristic, when he dizzily dribbled Lisandro Martínez at the edge of the penalty area until the Argentine world champion tripped over his own legs disoriented. Now, however, the defender isn’t just anyone, he’s one of the best in the Premier League. In a recent interview with the British “Telegraph”that he sometimes even wants to kill on the field. Against Salah he looked like a district league player.
Thanks to the actions of the recently weak form, the “world” game for Klopp and his Reds was the greatest possible liberation. Although Liverpool had slowly crawled up to the Champions League places in recent weeks, the German is experiencing the most difficult time of his successful era in Liverpool. Throughout the season, Klopp had had to listen to “pretty stupid questions” from journalists, hence the joke at the press conference. The title candidate was stuck in the middle of the table for a long time and is miles away from its own claims. The parallels to Klopp’s end at Borussia Dortmund have already been mentioned: At that time, the era ended after a difficult seventh year. Nevertheless, the situation was different, after all, BVB was in acute danger of relegation as the bottom of the table in the winter.
But such comparisons are probably completely unnecessary for the time being. “We need results and performance – and tonight we had both,” said Klopp after the rout in the BBC interview. “It is important that everyone knows: We are here and we are still alive.” His team’s performance was “outstanding”. “A few months ago everyone thought it was a good time to play against Liverpool,” said Klopp. “They weren’t allowed to say it out loud, but everyone thought it because they felt like we were in deep trouble. But now it’s not such a good moment for them because we seem like ourselves again. “
“It was unprofessional”
His counterpart, ManUnited coach Erik ten Hag, should have to put up with “pretty stupid questions” again. Because the time of humiliation for the English record champions was actually over – at least that’s what they thought. In the last catastrophic season, the Red Devils changed coaches twice and only barely managed to qualify for the Europa League. The clap against Liverpool was at least as painful: they lost both league games together with a total of 0:9.
But the team that went to Liverpool yesterday, Sunday, was a different one. Coach ten Hag had put United back on track. They were unbeaten in 11 games. The Dutch coach successfully ended the posse surrounding superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and brought the Red Devils back close to the top of the table. In addition, last week they won the League Cup, their first title since winning the Europa League in 2017. Ten Hag is popular with the fans and could perhaps herald a new coaching era.
But yesterday’s Sunday was a bitter setback. The hopefuls of the past few weeks – Marcus Rashford and Casemiro – remained shockingly pale. Consequently, the sports director of the “Telegraph” the 7-0 smack as the worst performance he’s ever seen on the biggest stage in English football. ManUnited legends fumed. Even the coach himself gave free rein to his displeasure. “It was a reality check,” said the served ten Hag in the BBC interview. “It wasn’t our standard. We didn’t play as a team. It was unprofessional.”
While fundamental questions suddenly arise again at United, it is now the long-awaited satisfaction for Jürgen Klopp. “We know it’s a freak result. There weren’t that many things we had to celebrate this season. That feels very good,” he said on Sky. But the question remains: what does a game like this mean for the rest of the season? By next week at the latest, Liverpool will have to go back to sweeping up the broken pieces of the season. The Reds lost the round of 16 first leg in the Champions League 5-2 to Real Madrid. And shown that the recent uptrend is still very vulnerable. It needs another memorable evening against Real, otherwise Klopp will go back to the “pretty stupid questions”.