Jurgen Klopp might have won every major honour with Liverpool since taking over as manager in October 2015, but the majority of his squad can’t actually say the same.
Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah, Andy Robertson, and Joe Gomez are the only players still standing at Anfield to have been involved in Klopp’s wins in seven different competitions. Even then, the latter only became the latest player to complete the set on Sunday as Liverpool defeated Chelsea in the League Cup final.
In contrast to that quintet, a number of Klopp’s side were yet to win anything at all with the Reds prior to Sunday’s victory over the Londoners.
“A lot of these boys, they didn’t win anything with Liverpool yet,” assistant manager Pep Lijnders pointed out on Friday when previewing the game. “Of course they give everything, despite a manager says that he’s leaving.”
With the Reds heavily-depleted heading into Sunday’s final without 11 senior players, their squad to face Chelsea included seven academy players – along with previous graduates Caoimhin Kelleher and Harvey Elliott. As a result, a whopping 11 players got their hands on their first winner’s medals as Liverpool players at Wembley.
Conor Bradley started the final, Bobby Clark, James McConnell, Jarell Quansah, and Jayden Danns all came on as substitutes, while Lewis Koumas, and Trey Nyoni were left unused on the bench as they all won the first trophy of their senior careers. Meanwhile, Cody Gakpo and summer signings Alexis Mac Allister, Wataru Endo, and Ryan Gravenberch also all picked up their first winner’s medals since joining the Reds last year.
Consequently, they can now all do something that Klopp had previously banned them from, with his golden rule in place at Anfield since 2016 – you can only touch the famous ‘This is Anfield’ sign once you have won a trophy for Liverpool.
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“I’ve told my players not to touch the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign until they win something!” he said. “It’s a sign of respect. I touched it when I was manager of Borussia Dortmund but we lost 4-0.”
But while a number of new players have now obtained permission to touch the sign, a few members of Klopp’s squad technically remain ‘forbidden’.
Summer signing Dominik Szoboszlai, and youngsters Stefan Bajcetic, and Ben Doak all missed Sunday’s final through injury and are yet to officially win anything with the Reds as a result – despite their earlier participation in the earlier rounds of this season’s League Cup.
Darwin Nunez could also still be classed as ‘forbidden’ depending on how those inside the Reds’ camp view the Community Shield. The Uruguayan scored on his debut against Man City in the curtain-raiser back in 2022, but it remains the only trophy of his Reds career to date.
Elsewhere, the likes of Nat Phillips, Tyler Morton, Rhys Williams, and Calvin Ramsay are yet to win anything with Liverpool either, having all left Anfield on loan this season.
Admittedly, Klopp doesn’t police such a rule strictly since his side started to win trophies regularly. After all, Gakpo was spotted ‘breaking’ it ahead of scoring his first goal for the club against Everton in February 2023.
But with so many players getting their first taste of silverware at Wembley on Sunday, the likes of the injured Szoboszlai will be desperate to follow in their footsteps and get their hands on their first first Reds winner’s medal in their own right sooner rather than later.
