The anticipated melancholy due to the departure of Jürgen Klopp ended up wearing down Liverpool’s combative character. The team paid for it with four days left until the end of the most disputed Premier League in memory. Everton took advantage of the confusion in a lateral foul and a corner in Klopp’s last derby at Goodison Park. Given the paralysis of the defense, Calvert-Lewin won. With the two goals of his nine under the arm, the most suffering team in the city hid in their castle to protect themselves from the threat of relegation.
The defeat knocked Liverpool out of the lead with 74 points. Arsenal settled there with 77. Arteta’s team will wait for City to play today in Brighton (9:00 p.m., DAZN) the first of the two games they have left to equal the 34 that their competitors have. If they win, the current champion will return to the top of the table with 79 points.
Xabi Alonso’s refusal to sit on Klopp’s bench from July onwards plunged Liverpool into a permanent state of chaos. Organizing the succession of the most popular and influential leader in the club’s history since Bill Shankly puts executives on the ledge. According to sources close to the club, Tom Werner, the president, and Richard Hughes, the director of operations, do not stop holding meetings and proposing candidates who they systematically contact. The brainstorming does not stop. Every week, a name comes up. Rúben Amorim, the Sporting coach; Thomas Tuchel, the Bayern coach; and finally Peter Bosz, the PSV coach, have received calls.
Leaders look for energetic, charismatic profiles. They are trying to bring the chosen one closer to the profile of Klopp, who announced on January 26 that he would resign at the end of the season. He argued that he was exhausted. That he had lost energy. Not everyone at Liverpool believed him. Since then, the players have experienced a kind of early orphanhood. On the one hand, they strive to raise the revolutions to win a title that honors Klopp for the last time. On the other hand, they are not always able to maintain competitive tension. As an expert who has worked for Liverpool in recent years says: “Klopp is tightening the screws but with an expiration date.”
The shaman’s stagings have fewer consequences each day, as the end of the season approaches. The locker room shows signs of dispersion. The 0-3 that Atalanta gave them at Anfield in the Europa League, two weeks ago, was an indication that Klopp’s efforts were no longer producing the same effect. The confirmation of something that the club points out as the true cause of the resignation: the fire that had animated the dressing room when Sané, Henderson and Firmino mobilized the team, had been extinguished with the arrival of footballers like Thiago, Darwin Núñez or Gakpo as aristocrats to a consecrated house. The old fighting spirit was lost. Without footballers to carry out maintenance tasks around him, Mo Salah settled in the molicie.
The lack of aggressiveness against Everton was revealed in the defense of set pieces. There Liverpool lost their first game at Goodison Park since 2010. There they could have left the most disputed championship in memory since the founding of the Premier in 1992.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
