Liverpool – West Ham (Premier League, 12th day): The Reds, or the myopia of football

Football suffers from myopia. We experience it in an increasingly restricted temporality, in which there is only the flow of a continuously restarted present, from match to match, from rumor to rumor, from ‘crisis’ to ‘crisis’. The truth of one weekend is forgotten the next. Instead of forming our judgment in a continuum, relying on what has been to understand what is, we fall under the thumb of immediate perception, ready to accept what we deny the previous moment, and vice versa.

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This is how, for a few weeks, we have been able to speak most seriously of the world of a ‘decline’ of Liverpool. We talked about the cycles of seven seasons, the seventh of which would inevitably be the last, which would be specific to the career of Jürgen Klopp. A numerologist would recognize himself in this ‘logic’. What happened in Mainz (seven years, and then went away) also happened in Dortmund (idem) and will therefore happen in Liverpool, where Klopp has just celebrated his seventh birthday. We are so superstitious in football. Such a player must imperatively put on his right foot first; and the number seven, associated with the German manager, cannot fail to be fatal to him. It’s absurd, but that’s the way it is.

Mainz and Dortmund, not the same story

A little history. In Mainz, Klopp left after a seven-year term during which the club, whose budget was among the most modest in the Bundesliga, managed, but not immediately, to climb into the elite. He remained there three seasons, which was a real achievement, after which he returned to the second division. Klopp remained in place despite relegation; and when he could not assure a new rise, he resigned, as he had announced that he would do if he failed in his mission. He ‘failed’ – by two points.

He also knew that what he had achieved had won over the leaders of Borussia Dortmund, and that the time had come to test himself in a more ambitious club: it was not one cycle that ended, it was another. which was beginning. What can be compared with what happened at BVB? Nothing.

At Dortmund, it’s not – not only – a series of bad results

which motivated his departure, a departure which he initiated on his own, once again, and whose deepest reason was his disagreement with the club’s recruitment policy, which had let Mario Götze and Robert Lewandowski leave against his wishes .

Unwavering support

Talking about ‘cycles’ is not absurd in itself. The legendary Hungarian coach Béla Guttman, double European champion with Benfica, assured that a manager had a lifespan of three years, no more; but these cycles have as much to do with a group’s capacity for renewal as with the wear and tear that too long a stay can cause in a team.

Jurgen Klopp

Credit: Getty Images

Some coaches make it a modus operandi, like José Mourinho and Antonio Conte nowadays, ‘using’ technicians if ever there was one. Klopp is cast in another mold, just as demanding, but much more flexible. He is also at a club that has supported him and continues to support him and relies on players who have not lost the confidence he inspires in them. Anyone who doubts that will have to look again at a victory over Manchester City that very few expected this weekend. The audience? As Jamie Carragher said, “Ask anyone who is in this stadium (Anfield) if they would like someone other than Klopp to be their manager, and the answer will be the same. We want that he stays, as long as possible.’ However, for the first time in his life at such a stage of his career in a club,

Klopp has pledged to stay beyond the famous seven years, until 2026.

The resemblance to 2020-21

All is not well at Liverpool, that’s for sure. The title is already out of reach. The way the Reds collapsed against Manchester United has still not been digested. The 2022-23 Liverpool are still finding their feet, one day in deep trouble against promoted Fulham, another irresistible, as Bournemouth and Rangers paid the price; and too often in between, uncertain, fragile, not yet comfortable in his new skin.

The accused Klopp can nevertheless invoke mitigating circumstances. If we compare it to that of Manchester City, the workforce at its disposal is not bloated, particularly in midfield. Whether one or two key players are in bad shape, as Salah was until recently, or just a bit behind, as was the case with van Dijk until his recital against City, and the effect is immediately feel it. And there, it is not one or two players who have been stopped, but more than half a dozen.

How Haaland made Manchester City even more unplayable Thiago Alcantara, the watchmaker of this team, was injured on the first day, he whose absence is the most serious for the Reds,as we said right here in August

. Diogo Jota, hit in the thigh, had missed the first five days of the championship, and here he is again unavailable, God knows until when. Luis Diaz won’t return until Boxing Day. We are still without news from Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Trent Alexander-Arnold is going through a very personal period of doubt. Konaté, Matip also flinched. Arthur Melo had to be operated on at the beginning of the month. Darwin Nuñez, who has just arrived, had to serve a three-match suspension. And Sadio Mané is no longer there. That’s a lot, that’s too much.Mutatis mutandis

, Liverpool are reliving their 2020-21 season, which no one seems to want to pick up on, when injuries and COVID plagued the Reds. Three wins – and eight losses – in fourteen matches between December 27 and March 7, twelve points out of forty-two possible, a disaster. It was a bit of a miracle and a lot thanks to Arsenal’s exhaustion that Liverpool finished third that season. This did not prevent the next one from being magnificent. Have we also already forgotten how Liverpool came close to a quadruple just a few months ago? It would seem so.

Six places won in a week? It is that entering the age of the super-elite, in England as in the rest of the major championships, we have come to normalize what, during the almost century and a half that preceded it, would have seemed aberrant. We now expect the English champion to flirt with 100 points. A series of ten consecutive victories is no longer exceptional. Manchester City lined up fourteen in 2018-19 and fifteen in 2020-21, Liverpool eighteen in 2019-20. We expect no less from a big club – by which we mean Manchester City and its only real rival for the last five seasons, Liverpool, which is however far from having resources comparable to those of the Cityzens,as Jürgen Klopp was certainly not wrong to remind

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Jurgen Klopp et Pep Guardiola

Credit: Getty Images

This is absurd, and what is even more so is that we have assimilated the new order as if it were natural, to the point of seeing everything through the prism of ‘super clubs’ – or what we expect from them, when their logic can only apply to a handful of them.

When the great Liverpool of the 1980s was crowned champion four out of five years, between 1981-82 and 1985-86, it was by conceding a minimum of six defeats per season. In 1983-84, when he was also European champion, he won the title with 80 points – in a championship with twenty-two clubs, the equivalent of 72 points in the current context

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And 72 points would be exactly the Reds’ total at the end of 2022-23 if they won their next two matches (at home against West Ham on Wednesday, and away to a losing Nottingham Forest on Sunday) and continued to do so. rhythm until the end of this campaign. It would be no surprise if Liverpool, twelfth before their victory over City, climbed six places or more in the standings in less than a week. What will we write then?

As for Manchester United of 1998-99, that of the hat-trick, the “best team in the history of the Premier League” for some, it was with 79 points that they became champions. Leicester in 2015-16? 81 dots. No, that story is not that old, and when we erase it from our perception, we blind ourselves. The present is not always right.
Dortmund finished seventh, reached Champions League round of 16 and German Cup final.

A sufficient total to hang the C1 in 2021-22, but twenty-one lengths from champion Manchester City

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