Harbinger Of Glory

With a blank, hollow look on his face, Jürgen Klopp walked into the Liverpool dressing room ahead of his players, stood near the board at the front, and kept his words to himself.

As a person who had football as practically the fuel to his life, it was starting to feel like it would burn him inside out that day.

He had managed in a lot of stadiums against a lot of teams and had been on the wrong side of half-time scorelines before.

He had also always known, quickly and clearly, what the problem was and what needed fixing, and that was one of the things that made him what he was.

Right now, standing in a dressing room at the DW Stadium two goals down to Wigan Athletic at half-time, he was genuinely trying to work out what the problem was, and the honest answer was that it felt less like a problem and more like a mismatch.

But the mismatch was not in Liverpool’s favour, and that was a sentence he had not expected to be forming in his head when the day began.

He stood there and thought about it until his players had filed in and found their seats.

”Settle down, guys,” he said, and they did.

When the room got quiet enough, he looked around and began pacing around.

”That was abysmal,” he said, without making it into more than it was. ”Not effort but the performance. And I need to understand why, because that didn’t look like a team following the plan we came here with.”

He paused, glancing around at his players who were trying to understand what he meant.

”So. What is happening out there? Tell me. What is not working? If something feels off or is bothering you, tell me before we go in for the rest of the game!”

A brief silence prevailed in the room as chairs shifted, but no human sound was made.

But then Alisson Becker, from his seat near the far wall, spoke.

”Reyes,” he said.

”From where I’m standing, I keep seeing him appear in dangerous positions that nobody is tracking.

He’s not taking the ball and being active with it the way he usually is and from what we’ve seen previously. He’s ghosting into spaces, and then suddenly he’s in front of goal, and it’s already a problem.”

The defenders around him nodded, feeling that something that they hadn’t really been able to articulate had been mentioned.

With the wall out of the way, Trent rubbed the back of his neck and also began to speak as Klopp nodded after Allisson’s words.

”Carlo,” he said.

”I’ll admit it. He’s too smart and too fast, and when he decides to go at me, I’m having a hard time stopping him.”

”He did the same thing to Walker in the Italy game we played a while ago, and even he was having a hard time stopping Carlo. I knew it was coming, and he still did it.”

After he said this, he looked at the floor.

”If we don’t deal with him in the second half, he’s going to keep going at me.”

MacAllister nodded from across the room.

”We need someone controlling the tempo better. Leo is running their midfield, and we’re not getting close enough to him to do anything about it.”

Szoboszlai leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

”That’s the thing though. You watch him, and you can’t point at one moment and say, that’s what he’s doing wrong for us to capitalise on. He’s not even doing anything that looks spectacular. He just keeps being a thorn in the side, appearing where he shouldn’t be and just throwing our game off overall!”

Klopp listened to all of it, nodding keenly before he picked his head up and then looked around the room.

”Anyone else?”

Most of the players shook their heads, feeling like their thoughts had been well conveyed.

”Alright,” Klopp said and started speaking.

His correction started with Reyes citing that from the start of the second half, Gravenberch would mark him whenever Wigan had possession.

He wasn’t to press the ball, nor the player.

All he had to do was follow him around and hover wherever Reyes went.

Everything else he wanted to do in the game he could do, but that job was always there first.

Then he turned to Trent.

”Your defensive game, we both know what it is. That’s on me for not adjusting sooner.”

He said it without blame, just as a fact before moving closer to the board indicating a role centrally.

”You move inside. Szoboszlai will drop into the right back role while MacAllister pushes up to fill Szobo’s role. You and Gravenberch will play centrally with MacAllister ahead of you.”

The players around the room absorbed it, heads moving slightly as they mapped the new shape in their minds.

”As for Leo,” Klopp said, and then stopped.

He looked at the board for a moment before shaking his head like he was shaking a thought away.

”I need to watch him more before I decide what I want to do about him. What I know is that whatever we’ve been doing isn’t it.”

After that, he lifted his watch and saw that there were now just three minutes of the interval remaining.

”Two nil is not finished,” he said.

”Two nil is a burden for them too. If we score early in this half, everything changes. It gets their crowd a bit silent, and it gets our fans going because aside from doing it for ourselves, we do it for the fans.”

He looked around the room one final time.

”That is not a scoreline Liverpool should be facing against a team like Wigan, no matter how good they’ve gotten!”

He nodded once and walked out of the room afterwards, leaving the players to their devices for the rest of the minutes, but a moment later, the starters were on their feet, slipping right back into their boots for those that had taken them off before moving out of the room!