It was a moment I had been waiting for all my life. For many others, the wait had been longer even than that — Liverpool’s title drought extended some eight years beyond my time on this earth.
Zooming in a little, it was the coronation that this specific Liverpool team so richly deserved. Over the years, the likes of Steven Gerrard and Luis Suárez had come close to hauling the Reds to the Premier League summit, but the side assembled by Jürgen Klopp was indisputably the greatest of the modern era. Excellent from back to front, it was the attacking triumvirate that will forever epitomize this specific moment in time: Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané, each at their individual pomp and working seamlessly together. Having won the Champions League the season prior, the Premier League didn’t just seem like a possibility — it seemed like a right.
Sure enough, as the campaign unfolded, it quickly turned into a procession. As Firmino shares in an extract from his new book (via the Mail), the team felt invincible:
“After 26 wins in 27 games, it was clear that the title was just a matter of time and the objective had already shifted: now we wanted to win the league undefeated. We discussed this among ourselves — and why not? After all, it was win after win every week, and that finishing line got closer with no sign or intention of slowing down.” What came next seemed like a disaster. An inexplicable 3-0 loss to Watford and then a Champions League exit at the hands of Atlético Madrid came within the space of a torrid few weeks.
But then a real disaster came. Liverpool didn’t know it at the time, but that defeat to Atlético Madrid at Anfield was the last game played in front of fans for many months, as the Coronavirus pandemic took hold.
As a Liverpool fan, I felt bad for caring about the football. People were dying, but talk of calling off the league still worried me more than I cared to admit.
