What happened in thesecond half of the Europa League final followed a pattern. Perhaps if Kévin Gameiro hadn’t scored quite so quickly in the second half, the impact of his equaliser wouldn’t have been so profound, but for the 25 minutes that followed, Liverpool were rudderless and rather seen as very frail.
The 48-year-old coach Jurgen klopp was convinced the Reds could rescue a broken season under his dominance, and seven months later, he has the chance to return them to the Champions League.
Jürgen Klopp vowed Liverpool would learn the lessons of a painful defeat in the Europa Leaguefinal as he blamed their “shocked” second-half display, plus the referee, for a comprehensive loss to Sevilla.
For the Liverpool fans making their way back into Basel after the Europa League final, the road ahead was littered with empty bottles and broken dreams.
Klopp, they believed, was the only tactician who could walk through the Melwood doors and provide the voltage needed to spark the club. A meeting between the owners and the 48-year-old took place in New York’s Madison Avenue - an area synonymous with advertising - and he marketed himself expertly.
It is the second showpiece of his short tenure, and the overwhelming feeling within the club and around the city is that there will be several more to come under Klopp.
They did believe Liverpool could possibly clinch a top-four spot in the league when making the appointment, and while the club finished a miserable eighth, Klopp has kept alive the goal of Champions League football.
The path back to Europe’s elite is not as important as Liverpool actually returning to a competition they have won more times than any other English club. They are the country’s pre-eminent force on the continent and their haul of five European Cups is only bettered by Milan and Real Madrid.
Defeat in the Europa League final was gutting for the Reds, but they need to dust themselves off as there’s much to work towards next seasons European night in the club’s history had seemed certain.
“When you leave yourselves too much to do one too many times it’s pretty difficult to keep doing it,” said Milner, with humble realism, afterwards.
In prematch, Klopp’s toothy smile had beamed positivity about a group of players written off under Rodgers as faulty products of the club’s transfer policy. “There was such a big amount of doubt on these players,” he said on Tuesday. “Now it’s a big opportunity to make a final step with this team.”
“The first thing you have to do when you look at the man in the mirror is criticise yourself,” Klopp concluded. Such self-assessment seems sure to bring sweeping change at Anfield next season.
Famous Klopp quotes on his one year tenure: “History is only the base for us. It’s not allowed that you take the history in your backpack. Chaos can be effective. It was chaos that brought the comeback against Dortmund, breaking the shape of the game.
“Even Rafa Benítez, that most Apollonian of managers, ended up unleashing chaos for his greatest moments as Liverpool manager, againstOlympiakos,MilanandWest Ham. But chaos is, by its nature, unreliable. It may be thrilling but what is needed now is a greater sense of control.”
— File photo by Reuters