By MADRID 2019: IS THE LIVERPOOL AND JURGEN CURSE OVER?
For Liverpool to claw its way back to a Champions League final, one year after losing in one, 14 years after winning one and so many disappointing years of domestic league run, the club had to play some of the best soccer in Europe for a year.
Liverpool also had to sign the most expensive goalkeeper in the world, held its nerve in places like Munich and Paris, and came back from the dead against Barcelona.
Before yesterday’s 2-nil victory against Tottenham, past trends by both the manager, Jurgen Kloop and Liverpool has shown the height of being unlucky with football silverware hence, the Kloop and Liverpool’s curse.
The Jurgen Curse
Jurgen Klopp’s reign as Liverpool manager has been impressive, with the German transforming the club from perennial stragglers to a side regularly competing for European and Premier League titles in his almost four years at Anfield.
For those who hold the opinion that winning silverware is the true way to a judge a manager’s success, however, they will point out his not-so-flattering record in finals until yesterday’s victory
As manager of Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool, Klopp has reached a total of eight finals – the most recent being this season’s Champions League which he eventually won but he had lost the last six in a row.
Liverpool’s disappointing premiership run
For all the impressive run that marked Liverpool’s 2018-19 Premier League campaign, there is no escaping the feeling that there will be some lasting scars.
97 points, a single defeat, the best defence, the second-best attack, league leaders for 141 days and still no league title since 1990.
In 1992 Liverpool finished sixth having been runners-up to Arsenal the previous campaign. 11 years later they finished fifth having again been runners-up to Arsenal 12 months earlier.
In 2010 Liverpool finished seventh having just lost out to United in the race for the title a season earlier, and then came 2015, when a side managed by Brendan Rodgers finished sixth on the back of a 6-1 defeat at Stoke on the final day of the season, having the year previously come within a Steven Gerrard slip of becoming champions.
Just to go down memory lane, in 2002, Gérard Houllier went on a spending spree that saw the frankly awful El Hadji Diouf, Salif Diao and Bruno Cheyrou arrive at Anfield.
In 2009, with Rafael Benítez in charge, Liverpool lost a key part of the team that had pushed United hard for the title in Xabi Alonso while in 2014 an even more important championship-chasing figure was lost in Luis Suárez, with the £75m Liverpool got for the Uruguayan largely wasted.
Klopp however, has proven himself to be a master of signing players that matter, this according to Liverpool’s supporters is due to the excellent working relationship with the sporting director, Michael Edwards, a little-known figure who has played a big role in bringing the likes of Salah and Mane.
With the impressive run at the Champions league, whoever joins Liverpool this summer, Klopp’s main task will be to ensure that once again, the reds can push, with a little more effort and a little more luck ignore the second-place curse, believe, and, as the popular demands Salah’s T-shirt says, never give up.
With last night’s victory, can we conclude that both the manager and team stands free from the trophy drought!
