For the first time since his debut season, Jürgen Klopp is back in a Wembley final. After the 2-0 win at Arsenal, Liverpool’s coach cleared up a widely held assumption
The Arsenal fans were badly wrong, and of course the Liverpool Echo wasn’t going to keep quiet about that. “We’re going to Wembley!” the visiting block had chanted as the Gunners fought to a 0-0 draw at Anfield in the first leg of the League Cup semi-final despite being shorthanded for long periods. But at just before midnight on Thursday, the Reds’ house paper was able to gleefully report something different: “There’s only one team going to Wembley here. “
With a 2-0 away win, the then so unimaginative Reds still drew the pairing on their side and followed Chelsea FC into the final. And that is remarkable for two contrasting reasons: because Liverpool have done it so often, but Jürgen Klopp has done it so rarely.
Klopp is in only his second Wembley final with Liverpool
With the club setting a new record by reaching their 13th final in the competition, Klopp had previously only ever reached a Wembley final – in league or FA Cup terms – once before in his debut season in 2015/16 (1-3 i.e. against Manchester City). “That is too long for a squad with this talent,” thinks not only the “Guardian”. In the FA Cup, Liverpool have not even reached the quarter-finals under Klopp.
Because he had regularly failed with starting formations full of youth and substitute players, the coach had solidified the impression that he did not take the national cup competitions very seriously. “No, that’s not true,” Klopp denied that widespread assumption on Thursday night, pointing to the complex mix of load management, demanding opponents, lack of luck and not always favourable match dates.
“I can’t just look at the full squad on paper and pick an eleven for the game from that,” he explained after yet another “difficult game in a difficult time”. “We have to take a lot of things into account.” Picking a Premier League team three days before a Premier League game, he said, just doesn’t happen.
Klopp now sees Diogo Jota as a “world-class striker “
On Thursday, it almost had to go like this: Without Africa Cup players Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Naby Keita, Klopp was virtually unable to experiment offensively. Only in the starting eleven for 17-year-old Kaide Gordon and cup goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher was it still apparent that this was a cup and not a league game.
While Arsenal were sent off for the third time in their last four appearances (Thomas, yellow-red after substitution, 90th), the usual suspects stood out for the visitors: Diogo Jota added a brace to his goal tally, Trent Alexander-Arnold his assist tally for the season to 14.
When Diogo Jota took a long ball with his chest and lofted over keeper Aaron Ramsdale for the decisive 2-0 lead (77th), “I don’t think many people in the stadium saw him free – Trent did,” marvelled Klopp, attesting to his double goal scorer that he had “developed into a real world-class striker” in a year and a half with the Reds. “He is incredibly important for us.”
Diogo Jota used to be one of those Liverpool players who just played from the start in the cup, right now he is keeping Liverpool’s season on track. And yet this is good news: when Liverpool play Chelsea on 27 February for their first League Cup title since 2012, the Africa Cup will be over.
