PASS AND MOVE: IT’S THIAGO’S GROOVE
When a star dies, it takes a few million years to burn through any remaining fuel – swelling in size to a red supergiant, before blowing itself apart in a sudden, supernova explosion. All that remains is a small, dense black hole until, eventually, new matter forms planets and fresh life scatters across space.
When a football team grows old together, its death is similar – albeit a few hundred million years shorter. The curtain call is imperceptible at first: they manage however they can and perhaps still win the odd trophy through little more than muscle memory, almost without anyone noticing they’re on their last legs. Then, when it’s too late to do anything, they destruct before your eyes. Left behind is a mere husk; memories of what was once the galaxy’s biggest star.
It happened to the great Leeds side that Don Revie built, and Bill Nicholson’s Spurs in the mid-1970s. Liverpool’s squad that won the 1989-90 First Division thought their eighth title in 12 seasons was just the latest, but an ageing squad relaxed and failed to foresee the revolution in off-field work that the Premier League would bring.
This summer, Jurgen Klopp was worried. True, he had finally ended the Reds’ 30-year wait for a top-flight crown, but the German tactician feared teams had started to figure his dominant Liverpool side out.
Having stormed to 26 wins from their first 27 league games last time out, Klopp’s men managed just six victories in their final 11. They had also been systematically shut down in the last 16 of the Champions League by Atletico Madrid, with their midfield lacking line-breaking passing quality when both Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson were stifled. The theory was a simple one: stop the full-backs, stop Liverpool.
Klopp sought fresh blood in the same way that part of Sir Alex Ferguson’s enduring genius was an uncanny talent for constant regeneration of title-winning Manchester United
