It is impossible to envisage what a post-Jurgen Klopp Liverpool will look like but their triumph over adversity at Wembley on Sunday will offer plenty of hope.
For the first time in a major final, the Reds named three players aged 21 or under in the starting XI: Ryan Gravenberch, Conor Bradley and Harvey Elliott. Five teenagers featured on the bench alongside 21-year-old Jarell Quansah.
By the time Virgil van Dijk’s header prompted that bench to erupt onto the touchline in a great bundle, most of them were on the pitch. Eighteen-year-old Jayden Danns had nearly won it himself with an extra-time header that tested Djordje Petrovic.
Lewis Koumas (18) and Trey Nyoni (16) did not get on but nineteen-year-olds Bobby Clark and James McConnell cannot have imagined in their wildest dreams that they would end the month by lifting a trophy at Wembley.
“I got told there’s an English phrase you don’t win trophies with kids,” Klopp said afterwards. “Yeah! Right. In my more than 20 years it is easily the most special trophy I ever won.”
Klopp described the development of McConnell and Clark as “absolutely insane”. He revealed the extent to which Danns has been impressing after recently joining the senior team in training: “I loved him from the first second”.
Devil’s advocate suggests that this was no great long game from Liverpool and that these teenage troopers were thrown into the fire by circumstance, with 11 first-team players injured at the start of the day and 12 by the end of it, Gravenberch having been stretchered off.
What is no coincidence though is that eight academy graduates picked up a medal – and that is without Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones.
It almost felt ominous when Klopp suggested there were even more youngsters who had been left at home who would have been ready for inclusion. He hailed the academy. “Seeing the faces after the game, the kids, can you create in football stories that nobody will ever forget?”
Mauricio Pochettino tentatively suggested his squad is similarly green, but Chelsea were also described as “billion-pound bottlejobs” by Gary Neville. Liverpool’s future does not depend on a mammoth injection of funds, even after FSG’s sale of a minority stake to a US private equity firm in September.
A couple of years ago, it would have been unthinkable that they would head into March top of the Premier League once they had lost Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino – Mo Salah, Thiago and Joel Matip may follow them this summer – but regeneration is a feature of Klopp’s work.
The outgoing head coach insists he “couldn’t care less about my legacy” but his delight at the thought of the youngsters’ future careers was palpable. His only grumble was “a ref who was not up to the level of the game”.
But it is hard to feel too bleak even with Klopp entering his final months on Merseyside. “I wish I could feel pride more often,” he added. “Tonight it’s the overwhelming feeling.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/6FxGgmV
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