Klopp, Jurgen Norbert (1967- )

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Liverpool Edges City in Game of Early Goals and Managed Risks

      by

      Liverpool advanced to the F.A. Cup final by beating its Champions League rival at Wembley. But for both teams, every choice matters now.LONDON — In the single corner of Wembley bathed by bright sunshine, Kevin De Bruyne dutifully shuttled up and down. He stretched out his hamstrings and his calves. He made sure his ankles were nice and loose, and, with great time and care, made sure his laces were tight. He wanted everything to feel just right when the call came.It never did. With Manchester City trailing Liverpool by two goals, with its place in the F.A. Cup final and its aspirations of completing a domestic and European treble slipping from its grasp, City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, did not summon De Bruyne, his outstanding playmaker. The Belgian spent a few minutes in the sunshine, his gaze alternating between the game unfolding in front of him and Guardiola, and then he returned to his seat in the shade.Whether De Bruyne knew it or not, Guardiola had never considered anything else. He would, of course, have preferred to throw De Bruyne into the fray — or, indeed, to have him on the field from the start — but he felt, sincerely, that he could not.De Bruyne had sustained a four-inch gash on his foot in City’s Champions League clash against Atlético Madrid, in Spain, on Wednesday. It had been stitched closed before he returned to England, and he had been prescribed a course of antibiotics to stave off an infection. It was starting to heal. Introducing him into a game three days later, though, would risk reopening the wound. “Then we would lose him for more games,” Guardiola said. “At the end, I didn’t want to take that risk.”It was hardly surprising that Guardiola was a little coy on why, exactly, De Bruyne was dispatched to the touchline to warm up, given that he evidently had no intention of allowing him into the game.Perhaps it was a psychological ploy for the benefit of his teammates, a little boost as they sought to build on Jack Grealish’s second-half goal and further reduce the three-goal lead Liverpool had established in a dominant first half. Or maybe it was a little ruse to unnerve Guardiola’s Liverpool counterpart, Jürgen Klopp, to force him to contemplate what he might do if De Bruyne, arguably the most creative player in English soccer, suddenly entered the fray.Either way, the fact that De Bruyne was reduced to playing the role of theoretical threat encapsulated the greatest challenge facing these teams over the next six weeks.Both have been swept to the cusp of not just glory but some multiple of it — City hopeful, still, of winning both the Premier League and Champions League, Liverpool now in contention to complete a sweep of four available trophies — by the prowess of their players and the brilliance of their coaches, by virtue of being not only the most gifted teams but also the most intense, the most intelligent and the most industrious.What unfolds between now and the end of the season, though, will hinge as much on endurance as on ability. The line between absolute success and relative failure is as much a war of attrition as a battle of wits. What will define who wins the Premier League and, possibly, the Champions League will not be which team can soar highest but which can run deepest.Manchester City’s Fernandinho, left, and John Stones at the end of a long week.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersThat is particularly true for teams that find themselves competing on multiple fronts. Guardiola and Klopp both take great pains to stress that looking too far ahead can lead only to ruin, that allowing thoughts to drift to the hypothetical can serve only to distract from the concrete and the tangible.But every lineup choice, for both coaches, between now and the end of the season, must take into account not just the task at hand but also the challenges to come.Guardiola, at Wembley, named De Bruyne as a substitute despite knowing that he would not play. He was joined on that list by Ilkay Gundogan and Aymeric Laporte, both of whom were in De Bruyne’s boat, omitted from this game with hopes that they would be available for the next, against Brighton, in the Premier League, or so that they would not reduce their chances of playing in the Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid in 10 days.Strange as it seems to say it, for a team that has spent a decade or so building one of the two most expensive squads of all time — a team that includes among its alternates the most expensive player in British history — City’s list of available players is not particularly “long,” as Guardiola put it.“It is OK when everyone is fit,” he said. The subtext, of course, was that it would not be when injury and fatigue set in. Though Guardiola prefers a concentrated, high-caliber squad, for a club of City’s long-term vision — not to mention its unrivaled resources — that is more than a little surprising; it is hard to imagine that the situation will not be amended during the summer transfer window.Sadio Mané scored twice for Liverpool. But more — and bigger — games loom.Tony Obrien/Action Images Via ReutersKlopp has taken the opposite approach. Liverpool’s squad, bolstered by the arrival of Luis Díaz in January and somewhat untroubled by injury in recent months, is sufficiently well-equipped these days that he was able to rest some of his key figures against Benfica in the Champions League last week — a privilege Guardiola, facing a pitched battle with Atlético Madrid, was denied — and still advance. That, in turn, allowed him to name a full-strength side at Wembley on Saturday, a fact that likely proved the decisive factor.The catch, of course, is that Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and the rest of the team have only 72 hours before they face Manchester United in the Premier League, with a Merseyside derby against Everton lingering on the horizon. Their legs will be just a little more weary for those games because of their exertions against City.Klopp, in that sense, took as much risk as Guardiola; sticking is no less of a gamble than is twisting, after all. That is the position in which both coaches, and both teams, find themselves: weighing risk and reward, hoping they call it right, knowing that everything is on the line. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      For Liverpool and Manchester City, a Showdown With Consequences

      by

      Manchester City and Liverpool meet Sunday in the first of a series of collisions that could decide as many as three trophies. Neither team can be sure of what comes after that.MANCHESTER, England — Pep Guardiola lay on his bed in a Madrid hotel room, staring at the ceiling, contemplating his next move. He had already endured two sapping games, half a dozen choleric news conferences, more than a week of highly charged, thinly veiled animosity. He was exhausted and exasperated, and he was still only halfway through.In the space of 18 days in the spring of 2011, Guardiola’s Barcelona encountered José Mourinho’s Real Madrid four times across three competitions. There was a clásico in the Spanish league. There was a clásico in the final of the Copa del Rey. There was a pair of clásicos, home and away, in the semifinals of the Champions League.It was not the games, though, that drove Guardiola to the sanctuary of his room. The games, if anything, were a release, a blessed respite from the endless rancor, the pervasive friction of Mourinho’s total psychological war. Guardiola knew he was being tricked into losing his cool, being sucked into a fight he could neither avoid nor win.In retrospect, those 18 days — captured by the Italian journalist Paolo Condo in his book “The Duellists,” — were the culmination of the defining rivalry of soccer in the early years of the 21st century, a clash of cultures that reverberated well beyond the long and vituperative shared history of Real Madrid and Barcelona.A series of four clásicos in 18 days in 2011, games that featured Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and layers of drama, were a seminal moment for soccer of that era. Photo by Angel Martinez/Real Madrid via Getty ImagesIt was not just the clásico. It was not just Lionel Messi against Cristiano Ronaldo. It was not just Guardiola against Mourinho, the finest managers in the world. It was two competing visions, two contrasting styles, two opposing forces: the creator against the cynic, the light against the dark.In the immediate aftermath, it was Guardiola who had the air of the victor. He did lose his cool, as Mourinho had hoped, and Barcelona did lose the Copa del Rey final. But Barcelona won both the league and the Champions League that year. Hindsight, though, would suggest all of that came at a cost for both men.A year later, Mourinho finally claimed a Spanish title. It would prove to be the high-water mark of his time in Spain and the end of his decade of greatness (though he would claim a couple of championships elsewhere). Something changed in Mourinho after Real Madrid. His fire never burned as brightly.Guardiola, too, bore the scars. He left Barcelona in 2012, drained and weary. He could not, he said, go on. He needed a break. Mourinho was not solely responsible for that fatigue, but it is hard to believe that the intensity of the rivalry was not a significant factor in it. It took Guardiola a year’s sabbatical in New York for him to refuel.Now, more than a decade later, he could be forgiven for hearing distinct echoes of 2011. Over the next seven days, Guardiola’s latest masterpiece, the Manchester City team he has guided to three Premier League titles in four years, will face its greatest — and only — domestic challenger, Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, twice, across two competitions.Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, professional admirers but not friends in the truest sense. Jason Cairnduff/ReutersFirst, on Sunday, the teams will meet in the Premier League at the Etihad, in a game that will likely decide England’s next champion. Next Saturday, they will face off again, this time at Wembley in the semifinals of the F.A. Cup. Both matches may well prove a prelude to a third, altogether more epochal meeting: Liverpool and City are favorites to reach the Champions League final on May 28 in Paris.The parallel with those 18 days in Spain, of course, is not perfect. Manchester City and Liverpool have fostered a fierce rivalry in recent years, but it lacks the depth and the context of the clásico. Its tendrils do not stretch back decades, nor is it bound up with questions of politics and history and, particularly, national identity.Likewise, Guardiola and Klopp do not have the same combustible chemistry that Guardiola and Mourinho did. It would be a stretch to say they are friends, but, almost a decade after they first ran into each other in Germany, they remain cordial. In 2020, Guardiola called Klopp in the small hours of the morning to congratulate him on winning the Premier League. Klopp describes Guardiola as the best coach in the world at every opportunity.Many of the other ingredients, though, are present. Just as with Real Madrid and Barcelona, everything rides on games between these two clubs. One of these teams will win the Premier League. One of them will go into the F.A. Cup final as the heavy favorite. Only Bayern Munich might be considered a peer in the Champions League.Both coaches have done what they can to quash the idea, but both are perceived as chasing multiples of glory: City, a domestic and European treble, last achieved by an English team in 1999; and Liverpool, an unprecedented and, in reality, improbable sweep of all four trophies available to them. Their meetings are, in that light, the whole ballgame.Liverpool and Manchester City fans at a Champions League in 2018. The teams could still meet in the competition this year.Anthony Devlin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat their aims are so lofty illustrates that Liverpool and City can reasonably be regarded as the best two teams on the planet — Bayern alone may have the right to quibble with that assessment — just as Real Madrid and Barcelona could be in 2011. They are again led by the two finest coaches of their generation, the two minds who have done more than anyone else to define and distill what elite soccer will look like in the 2020s, the two scions of two great schools of thought. The rivalry of City and Liverpool does not have roots in the past. But it does encapsulate the present.The absence of overt institutional hostility between the clubs, meanwhile, should not be mistaken for affection. The schism that runs between Manchester City and Liverpool can feel superficial, almost confected, a friction that is performed out of instinct rather than something heartfelt. But it is not.There have been a series of flashpoints, ordinarily deemed serious transgressions by one side and dismissed as petty by the other: City’s complaint at the improper accessing of its recruitment software by Liverpool’s staff in 2013, an offense for which Liverpool paid £1 million ($1.3 million) in compensation; City’s team bus being pelted with bottles on arrival at Anfield in 2018; Liverpool’s annoyance at a 2019 video of City’s players adopting a terrace chant referring to its rival as “victims of it all,” an insult that is often associated with the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, which caused the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans.All of these events, though, are rooted in a deep-seated clash of competing corporate philosophies. Liverpool’s hierarchy believes that Manchester City’s primacy has been achieved through a form of financial doping — as highlighted most recently by another cache of leaked documents published in Der Spiegel. Manchester City’s executives, in turn, see Liverpool as the prime example of a longstanding cartel that feels threatened by the emergence of genuine competition.The same can be said of the coaches. Klopp and Guardiola’s mutual admiration should not make one forget the intensity of competition between them.Guardiola and Klopp rare disguise their emotions on the touch line.David Klein/ReutersIn a scene in “All Or Nothing,” the documentary that followed City’s victorious Premier League campaign in 2018, Guardiola and his coaching staff discuss the threat posed by Liverpool’s famed front three. That, in itself, is not especially remarkable. What stands out is that they are doing it in the changing room at Goodison Park, a few minutes before a game against Everton.Guardiola has never made much secret of his focus on Liverpool. That same year, he told a seminar at the city’s university that he did not read many books these days, because after a few minutes of trying his mind would wander to “Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool.”Earlier this year, with City apparently sitting on a comfortable lead at the top of the Premier League, he was asked if anyone could catch his team. Of course, he replied: Liverpool. “They are always there,” he said. “They’re a pain.” On Friday, he described Klopp as the “greatest rival” of his career.“When I retire and I’m playing golf, I will look back on Liverpool as the hardest opponent I faced, without doubt,” Guardiola said.For the last four years, the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester City, between Klopp and Guardiola, has defined English soccer. The next seven days — and perhaps the next six weeks — may decide how its story is told in years to come. As Guardiola knows from personal experience, though, that level of competition leaves its mark. It is entirely possible that, when it has all come to an end, neither coach, and neither team, will quite be the same again. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Can Liverpool and City Win When the Bar Is Set Too High?

      by

      The Premier League leaders will compete for three high-profile trophies this spring. But does failing to win them all turn a great season into a bad one?Manchester City had everything ready. A few days before the 2019 F.A. Cup final, the club’s executives had already mapped out the route for the victory parade. They had booked the open-top bus. They had arranged a whole day of festivities. They were well aware it was tempting fate, but they had no choice: These things, after all, take time and planning.Besides, whatever happened against Watford at Wembley, there would be plenty to celebrate. Pep Guardiola’s team had won the Carabao Cup, the first and the least of England’s domestic priorities, a couple months earlier. The previous week, it had seen off the spirited challenge of Liverpool to retain the Premier League title. The F.A. Cup would complete the set.The only thing left to decide was how to brand the achievement. Everything needs a name these days. Everything needs a hashtag. The previous year, it had been easy. Then, City had become the first team in English history to claim 100 points in a single season; the players who had done it were crowned not just champions, but Centurions, too.They were now on the cusp of following that with an even more impressive feat: becoming the first side in English history to win a domestic treble, a clean sweep of the league title and both cup competitions.Inside the club, though, there were qualms about using that word — treble — too loudly. Some executives feared it was too closely associated with Manchester United’s 1999 team, the one that won the league, the F.A. Cup and the Champions League. Needing to qualify City’s treble as “domestic” might, they worried, cheapen it somehow.Ferran Soriano, City’s domineering chief executive, felt there was another problem. City, he was adamant, would have four trophies to parade. It had, back in August, won the Community Shield, too. That the traditional curtain-raiser for the English season is, in effect, a preseason friendly with some fireworks at the end of it did not deter him. It was a trophy, Soriano said. City should celebrate it. He even had the nomenclature ready: the Fourmidables.Peter Powell/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was more than a little unease at the suggestion. Several City executives cautioned that including the Community Shield would expose the club to accusations of résumé padding that were, in the circumstances, entirely unnecessary. Soriano, though, would not be swayed. Crucially, he had Guardiola’s support, too. A couple of days later, after City won the final, its bus picked its way through the streets of Manchester, the word “Fourmidables” plastered on its side.That Soriano was willing to ignore the concerns of his colleagues and subordinates, and withstand the allegations of hubris from rival fans, is instructive. Whatever else he might be — visionary, maverick, the sort of person one can imagine self-identifying as a “disrupter” — Soriano has an instinctive understanding of modern soccer. And in modern soccer, he knows, glory is measured in bulk.In the month or so since Liverpool lifted this season’s Carabao Cup, Jürgen Klopp has fielded questions about whether his team can win a “quadruple” — all of England’s domestic competitions, plus the Champions League — on an almost weekly basis. He has dismissed them equally frequently. “We are not even close to thinking about crazy stuff like that,” he said last month.Guardiola will know the feeling. He, too, has been peppered with questions — certainly since the turn of the year, if not before — about whether this edition of Manchester City can claim another treble this season, one that does not require the geographical qualifier. He, too, has done what he can to minimize expectations. “I try to say to the club ‘enjoy these moments during the season’,” he said. “Don’t wait to win the Premier League, the Champions League or the F.A. Cup to be happy. Enjoy the day. Enjoy the moment.”Once you’ve won the league, does the Carabao Cup measure up?Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockIt is not hard to trace the roots of this obsession with doubles and trebles and, now, quadruples: In several leagues across Europe, the superclub era of the last decade or so has rendered winning a single league title essentially meaningless for the likes of Paris St.-Germain, Bayern Munich and — until its self-inflicted implosion — Juventus.Their domestic leagues are so hopelessly unbalanced that the destiny of the championship is rarely in any real doubt. With that trophy essentially preordained, they are left to find other targets. That may be a streak — picking up nine or 10 titles in a row — or it may be supplementing it with a glut of other prizes. Failure to do so can, with increasing frequency, cost a manager their job.That has, slowly, turned this into soccer’s age of the multiplicative. When Manchester United won its treble in 1999, it was the only team in any of what we now think of as Europe’s top five leagues to have done so (though Celtic, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven had all pulled it off previously). Since 2010, it has happened five times. Barcelona and Bayern have both done it twice.Domestic doubles — winning the league and the (main) domestic cup in the same season — are now so commonplace that they pass almost without notice: five for Bayern and four for Juventus and P.S.G. in the last 10 years, as well as three for Barcelona.The landscape in England, of course, is different. Competition between the country’s Big Six means City is the only team to have done the double since 2010. But its superclubs are not immune to the broader trend. For them, too, the currency of greatness is no longer primacy, but dominance.Liverpool and Manchester City will meet in the Premier League and the F.A. Cup in April, and could square off in the Champions League after that.Andrew Yates/EPA, via ShutterstockThat approach, though, carries with it an attendant danger, the risk that great teams — teams that have enjoyed remarkable success, that rank among the strongest the Premier League has ever seen — will somehow find themselves cast as failures: not for not winning, but for not winning enough.The final eight weeks or so of the Premier League season has long been set up as a battle between Liverpool, pursuing a quadruple, and Manchester City, chasing a treble. As they are already set to meet directly in two of those competitions over the coming weeks, both of them, by definition, cannot succeed. The likelihood, even at this late stage, remains that neither of them will.That raises the prospect of two teams, each with trophies to display and achievements to celebrate, being told to look back on their seasons with regret. If Manchester City wins only the Premier League, would that represent disappointment? It should not, of course, but in an era defined by a gluttony for glory, it might be presented — or even feel — like an anticlimax.What if Liverpool emerges from this campaign with only two domestic cups? Is that enough? Klopp’s team would have missed out on the two trophies that it most covets, of course, but that is not quite the same thing as falling short. If the only true victory is one that is total, all-conquering, absolute, then it suggests the bar has been set a little too high, that we have somehow concocted a world in which even success can be dressed up as failure.The Ignorance of IsolationQatar is expected to be Lionel Messi’s last World Cup.Franklin Jacome/Pool Via ReutersBy the time Argentina next takes to the field — at Wembley, for a meeting with the reigning European champion, Italy — it will be nearing three years since it last lost a game. Since succumbing to Brazil in the 2019 Copa América, Lionel Scaloni’s side’s only defeat has come against Sao Paulo’s health authorities. Other than that, it is played 31, won 20, drawn 11.It is, without doubt, the sort of record that should stir Argentine souls ahead of a World Cup that has particular resonance: 2022 will, after all, likely prove to be Lionel Messi’s final bow in an Argentina jersey, his last chance to emulate Diego Maradona and carry his country to the greatest prize of all.But it must still come with a caveat. That meeting with Italy — the so-called Finalissima — will be the first time Argentina has faced a European opponent since drawing with Germany in October 2019. Its run, these past few years, has been a distinctly local affair, built and made in South America.Brazil, as it happens, is in much the same boat. Since losing to Belgium in the 2018 World Cup quarterfinals, Tite’s side has faced only one European team — the Czech Republic — and that, too, was three years ago. Brazil is currently rated as the favorite to win the World Cup, a status that is based almost exclusively on its ability to beat the same South American teams over and over again.Brazil breezed through World Cup qualifying. But the World Cup may end differently.Silvia Izquierdo/Associated PressThat sudden isolation, of course, is partly linked to the coronavirus pandemic, but it is also connected to the rise of the Nations League in Europe and the exigencies of South America’s endless round of World Cup qualifying and Copas América. There has, since 2019, been very little chance to play friendlies.But as the World Cup draws closer, that absence of varied competition leads to a sense of ignorance. We can be sure that Argentina (which drew Mexico, Poland and Saudi Arabia on Friday) and Brazil (which will play Switzerland, Serbia and Cameroon in Qatar) are competitive in South America. We can have no idea at all how they will hold up against the European teams that both must overcome to emerge triumphant in Qatar.Three Euro-Centric World Cup PredictionsBelgium sits right behind Brazil in the world rankings.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockThere is no question that soccer’s approach to draws is, deep down, extremely ludicrous. All of the pomp and the ceremony, the droning speeches and the self-importance, the window dressing and the time-wasting, all for the very simple act of some men in the warm embrace of middle age pulling pieces of paper from a bag.At the same time, though, Friday’s World Cup draw is extremely important in a way that we do not, perhaps, acknowledge as much as we should. The order in which names are flourished by a selection of soccer’s great and easily booked will not, perhaps, determine who wins the World Cup. But it will go a long way to deciding the fates of a whole clutch of teams.A kind group, for example, might make the difference between Senegal’s making the quarterfinals, or exiting after the first 10 days. A difficult one might cost Gregg Berhalter his job. It might turn Ecuador into the story of the tournament, or the Netherlands into a laughingstock. Random chance matters.It also, of course, makes it very difficult to guess at what might happen in Qatar this winter. Still, there is no harm in trying.1. A European team will win the tournament. It is now 20 years since a South American side (Brazil) won the World Cup, and only one team from the continent — Argentina — has made the final since. The balance of power has shifted in favor of the industrialized youth development systems of western Europe, and it is, sadly, hard to see that changing.Kylian Mbappé and France are chasing a second straight world title.Kimmo Brandt/EPA, via Shutterstock2. The surprise packages will not be much of a surprise at all: They will, instead, be the teams with the greatest concentration of players drawn from Europe’s major leagues. Those sides drawn from domestic competitions — Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Qatar — will struggle to make an impact.3. For the (relative) minnows and the makeweights, firepower will be the difference. Outside of the traditional elite, very few teams can call on high-caliber forwards. Those that can, like Morocco and Iran, will have an invaluable edge.CorrespondenceWorkers inside Qatar’s 80,000-seat Lusail stadium. It will host the World Cup final in December.David Ramos/Getty ImagesA note from Alan Goldhammer, whose surname remains the single greatest thing about this correspondence section, on an issue that we will confront over the next eight months. “I will not watch matches played in stadiums built largely by ‘slave’ labor,” he wrote. “It might be a minority view, but it was a decision that I arrived at 18 months ago and it did not require a great deal of thinking. I am sure the World Cup will have a giant viewership. That viewership will be diminished by one and I would hope many more.”If that applies to you, too, I would be interested in hearing from you. It is something we all have to be conscious of, whether we engage with the World Cup as fans, as journalists, or even as players: To what extent is that interaction a form of complicity?Paul Rosenberg, meanwhile, wants to know if there is “any shock comparable to Italy’s loss against North Macedonia?” In World Cup finals, the answer to that is yes: France’s losing to Senegal in 2002 and North Korea’s win over Italy in 1966, among several others. For qualifying, it is a little trickier, but I would suggest Ireland’s beating the Dutch to reach the 2002 World Cup might be up there.And, of course, there had to be someone who would leap to the defense of deep-dish pizza. (This was genuinely the first email that appeared in my inbox after last week’s newsletter; it obviously cut deep.) That someone was Rich Johnson. “I must express my deep disappointment at your recent pejorative characterization of deep dish pizza,” he wrote. “As a Chicago native, I can tell you that the only thing better than deep dish pizza is stuffed pizza, which is perhaps the perfect meal.”It may or may not be the perfect meal, but a stuffed pizza — like a deep-dish pizza — is not actually a pizza. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      In the Premier League, There’s No Looking Back

      by

      England’s clubs are plowing ahead with their holiday schedule. But amid questions about Omicron and fairness, do they really have a choice?And so on we roll, heads down and teeth gritted, grimly determined to reach the other side, wherever and whenever that might be found. The Premier League had planned to stage a full suite of games on Boxing Day, but as you read this sentence, its best hope is still just to get through as many of them as it can. In midweek, it will try to do it all again, and then, after ringing in the New Year, once more for good measure.That is the plan, anyway. Nobody truly believes it will play out like that. Last weekend, the division lost more than half its schedule to Covid outbreaks. At least one more match, Chelsea’s visit to Wolves, took place despite a request from Chelsea to postpone it because of a rising case count. On Thursday, it lost two more.The chances that every single one of the 30 top-flight games stuffed into England’s holiday season would be completed were always slim. There will be more contagion, more positive tests, more players self-isolating, more games canceled at short notice, more fans left suddenly adrift in unfamiliar town centers, facing an empty afternoon and a long journey home.But as far as the league and its constituent clubs could see, there was no other choice. When they sat down virtually on Monday to discuss how — and if — to proceed, they had three options. One was to play on. One was to reduce the workload from three games in a week to two. The other was to shut down, indefinitely, until the Omicron surge abates.Instinctively, it is easy to assume that the Premier League has done what it always does: followed the money. Boxing Day — and the rest of what is contractually known as “the busy festive period” — is in many ways the centerpiece of English soccer’s calendar. It functions as a test of nerve as much as a test of strength; it is when contenders separate themselves from also-rans, when the outline of the season’s conclusion begins to be mapped out.The Premier League race may hinge on health as much as much as on form.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockAnd while it is a tradition England cherishes and its rivals envy — the Premier League’s success is the reason that Italy’s Serie A, in recent years, has toyed with the idea of playing games the day after Christmas — it is also lucrative broadcasting.Not just because there is a captive audience at home, waiting to be sold things in commercial breaks, but because much of the rest of life — even in times less strange and unnerving than this — is on hold. The Premier League, soccer as a whole, gets to be just where it likes to be: front and center, the only show in town. Ultimately, it was never going to vacate that slot, not voluntarily.But that reading is, in truth, a little unfair. Neither of the available alternatives could be considered a right answer. Shutting down indefinitely — an idea that attracted no advocates in that virtual meeting — might feel like the moral choice, but it is not something that has been asked of any other industry. It also raises the question of how, precisely, you start again.There was more support for easing the burden, for allowing each club to postpone one of its three fixtures. Liverpool, among others, spoke in favor of that in private, just as its manager, Jürgen Klopp, has done in public. A couple of days later, the Liverpool captain, Jordan Henderson, made the valid point that nobody seems to have thought about asking the players what they want to do.The counterargument, though, was not without its merits. The Premier League is already facing a severe backlog of games — both Tottenham and Burnley have played three games fewer than some of their rivals — and there is a distinct shortage of space to fit them back in. Adding another whole round of games to that would create a logistical headache.The Champions League fate of West Ham, and of Tottenham, could be decided by the results of several rescheduled Spurs games next year.David Klein/ReutersOf course, to some extent this is the Premier League engaging in its favorite pastime: kicking the can down the road. This is an organization, we should not forget, that was beset by factionalism and fury over what to do with one season interrupted by a pandemic but did not think it worth it, in the aftermath, to draw up a protocol about what to do should another season be interrupted by the exact same pandemic. Thinking ahead is not, if we are honest, a strong suit.Deciding to play on does not preclude more postponements, more games to fit in to an overstuffed calendar drawn up by a whole range of organizations apparently unable to see beyond their own immediate requirements. Further cancellations and complications are almost inevitable. The Premier League is, effectively, simply gambling that there will be fewer than 10, that this is the least bad option.That approach comes with a cost, though. One of sport’s most abiding myths is that the league table does not lie. Every team plays each other home and away and, at the end of the season, all of the fluctuations of fate — the injury crises and the rotten luck and the good fortune and the decision not to send off Harry Kane — are evened out, and a true and, crucially, fair order of merit is established.It is a pretty fantasy, but it is a fantasy nonetheless. A league season is not inherently fair. It is simply unfair in a way that we, as a soccer culture, are prepared to tolerate.It is not, for example, entirely fair that Watford was able to play Newcastle United at home at a time when Newcastle’s squad was a ragtag bunch of journeymen. Three of Newcastle’s direct rivals for relegation — Leeds, Burnley and Norwich — have to play Newcastle at home after it has had a chance to inject $200 million into its team in the January transfer window. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the vagaries of the fixture schedule may determine which of those teams goes down.It is not entirely fair that teams can fire an underperforming manager at any point in the season — in a way not possible with players — giving their subsequent opponents a more challenging encounter than their previous ones, or that some teams get more rest between games than others.That is not to complain; these are trivial inequities, especially when compared with things like the vast financial chasm that exists between teams in the same league. It is simply to point out that no league season can be truly, unwaveringly, incontestably fair, and that it is something we can all accept.Just like fans, Pep Guardiola and his players now face Covid-19 checks at the stadium door.Lee Smith/Action Images Via ReutersThe problem with the Premier League’s decision to push through as best it can, commanding that any and every club with enough uninfected players to fill a team and the requisite number of substitutes must play on, canceling some games but continuing with others, is that it adds an extra — and perhaps excessive — level of competitive distortion.Tottenham, without question, will suffer for having to make up the three games it lost to its Covid outbreak. There will be busy weeks in the spring, and fatigue may weigh heavy. But will it suffer more than — say — Chelsea, which had to play on despite the fact that its manager, Thomas Tuchel, made it very plain that he felt he did not have enough players?Does Tottenham not now have a better chance of winning those games than it would otherwise? And what would a team like Leeds make of that, given that it has a far longer list of absentees but has had to endure simply because they had not — at least until Thursday — been missing because of Covid?It is easy, at this point, to say that the teams at the summit of the Premier League all have enough players to cope, and indeed they do. There is no reason to feel sorry for the poor little rich boys. But what if it happens at the other end of the table? What if Burnley must play through, but Norwich gets to reset? What if it proves the difference between survival and relegation? What if it costs people their jobs? Not the players, but the support staff whose income is dependent on continued access to the wealth of the Premier League?There is, again, no correct answer here, though there are other solutions available. Perhaps clubs should be made to play on — unless they cannot guarantee the health and safety of the opposing team — with whatever group of players they can cobble together? That is the usual sporting punishment for missing players, as Leeds is busy discovering.Or perhaps, as is the case elsewhere, they should be punished for failing to fulfill their fixtures, for not adhering to the coronavirus protocols well enough? Maybe each team that cannot complete a game should just suffer a 3-0 defeat? And yet that, too, is hardly an advertisement for fairness.And so the Premier League has done the only thing it can think of: to hit and hope, to assume that when it emerges from the thick fog of winter there will be something on the other side. What shape it will take, what difference it will have made and what damage it might have done are questions that can wait for later. Until then, it will do what it has always done, plowing on regardless, into the current.CorrespondenceLet’s start with a suggestion from Jeffrey Hoffman as to how to keep UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, from making a huge mess of pulling some balls out of a pot. “Go back to a straight knockout tournament. No seeding. No country protections. No nothing. If Paris St.-Germain plays Manchester City in the first round, so be it. Win or go home.”Now this is, it has to be said, quite a popular idea with — let’s put this diplomatically — a certain demographic: those over 45. It is not, though, one I agree with. Randomness is a welcome addition to the Champions League, but too much randomness is not. It makes sense to try to funnel the best teams toward the final rounds. It just doesn’t make any sense to filter them once they are there.Lionel Messi and Paris St.-Germain are 13 points clear at the top of the Ligue 1 table, the largest Christmas gap in any of Europe’s top five leagues.Christophe Ena/Associated PressBrion Fox, meanwhile, picks up on the idea that there are too many penalties. “There are too many penalties,” he said, “because there are too many fouls. We have so many, they have their own lingo: professional fouls, tactical, strategic, lazy, aggressive, late. Players are criticized for not being tough enough to foul. Some players seem to be on the field solely to provoke fouls. Others, to satisfy the desire of those who seek to provoke. The lack of flow of the game, with the constant starts and stops, is why I prefer the women’s game.”To round this out, maybe there are too many fouls because there are too many things that are considered fouls? Maybe if we decided that some things weren’t really fouls, we could concentrate on eliminating the ones that definitely are? (Statistically, Brion is right: There are fewer fouls in women’s soccer. In England, for example, it’s currently 17.5 per game in the Women’s Super League and 20.2 in the Premier League. So the difference is not vast, but I’d agree it’s probably noticeable.)And because it’s Christmas, we will finish with these gifts to you: two absolutely perfect emails from the inbox this week. First, a prime example of the sort of correspondence I love — questioning and imaginative and beautifully put — from Connor Murphy:“What is the optimal shape of the penalty area? That it’s currently a rectangle seems likely to be nothing more than historical accident, a consequence of our infatuation with right angles. Is a foul just outside of the top of the box and right in the center of the goal more deserving of a penalty kick than one occurring on a goal line corner of the box?”(Great question, don’t know, maybe the shape of a partially deflated hot-air balloon?)The penalty area at Villa Park, still a rectangle. For now.Molly Darlington/Action Images Via ReutersAnd then there was this mildly confessional missive from Dan Portnoy. “My son and I, both low-level referees, jumped out of our seats on the Antonio Rüdiger foul. We’ve been saying for years that players on the edge of the box, heading away from the goal, don’t deserve a penalty, even though they do deserve something.“We’ve called for a referee judgment call as to whether a foul in the box deserves a penalty, or, as an alternative, a free kick from anywhere outside the box that the offended team chooses. When I’m refereeing and a foul happens near the edge of the box, I often award a free kick, not a penalty, declaring that it happened just outside the box (please don’t tell anyone).”Don’t worry, Dan, I won’t.That’s all for this week, and for next week, too, when we take our one newsletter break of the year. If you can’t wait two weeks to be heard, get in touch at askrory@nytimes.com with any hints, tips, complaints or ideas. Twitter can perform much the same function, of course. We’re looking back on the year for the Set Piece Menu podcast this week, first for good, and then for bad. The good episode is heartwarming. The bad one is more fun.For those of you who celebrate, have a great Christmas. For those that don’t, enjoy the fact that everything is a little quieter than normal. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      In Premier League, Fear and Falsehoods Fill Vaccination Gap

      by

      The report spread like wildfire. Premier League players shared the link among their peers. Some passed it to their family members and closest confidantes. A handful were sufficiently troubled by what it seemed to suggest that they presented it to their clubs’ in-house medical teams, seeking advice.It had been produced by a website that says it tracks the number of “young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021 after receiving one or more Covid vaccines.” The report claimed to list 19 “athletes” — mostly in the United States — who it said had experienced heart attacks after being inoculated. Some of the attacks, the site noted ominously, had been fatal.Almost immediately, the doctors and others spotted the glaring flaws in the research. One of the examples cited was Hank Aaron, the Hall of Fame baseball player, who had died in January. He was 86. Another name on the list, a former N.B.A. player, had been 64. The most cursory research showed that many of the younger athletes, too, had documented, underlying conditions.But that did not matter. Nor did the fact that the report was subsequently and comprehensively debunked. It had made the soccer players question whether they should agree to be vaccinated. The damage, at least in the view of medical experts, had been done.These are not easy weeks for the Premier League, which is currently enduring a surge in virus cases, a glut of postponements — two more games were postponed on Thursday — and calls even from within its ranks to take at least a temporary pause in the season. Those troubles have placed its lagging vaccination record under fierce scrutiny, and prompted questions as to why the richest league in the world has had such trouble convincing its stars to get the shot.In one light, the league and its teams have had considerable success: The Premier League has released figures suggesting that 84 percent of its stars are on their “vaccination journey,” meaning they have had at least one of a potential three shots since becoming eligible in the spring. The remaining 16 percent, though — around 100 players — has become a cause of concern.The Premier League has said that 84 percent of its players have had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. But that means 16 percent have not, making the league’s vaccination an outlier in soccer, and elite sports.Peter Cziborra/Action Images, via ReutersSix of the 10 Premier League games scheduled to be played last weekend were postponed after clubs were struck by Covid outbreaks. At least one of those matches is reported to have been called off not because of a raft of positive tests, but because a number of unvaccinated players were self-isolating, as British law requires, after being identified as close contacts of a confirmed case.The lost weekend highlighted the Premier League’s struggle to keep its vaccination figures on par with the rest of Europe’s major domestic competitions, and other top sports leagues around the world.Serie A, the Italian top flight, has vaccinated 98 percent of its players. In France, the figure stands at 95 percent, and in Germany 94 percent — numbers on par with the N.F.L., N.B.A. and N.H.L. in North America. Spain’s soccer authorities reported that, taking into account both vaccination and naturally-acquired immunity, 97 percent of players were fully covered. The comparison with England, then, is stark: In the Premier League, only 77 percent of players have had two vaccinations.Establishing the reason for that divergence is not straightforward. The New York Times spoke with an array of players, advisers, executives, officials and medical staff members, most on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to discuss private health matters. Those interviews painted a complex, inchoate portrait of why vaccine hesitancy has been allowed to become so embedded in the richest soccer league in the world.“It’s tough to say there is one thing,” said Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Britain’s players’ union. “It really is on a case-by-case basis.”Concern about possible side effects has, certainly, become widespread. A spate of recent, high-profile incidents involving players enduring heart problems while on the field — including Christian Eriksen, the Denmark midfielder who collapsed at last summer’s European Championship, and Sergio Agüero, the Barcelona striker who just retired — has fueled suspicion of the vaccines among some players.For athletes sensitive about anything they put into their bodies, even the debunked claims can still seem persuasive.Craig Brough/ReutersSome medical staff at clubs contend the suspicion has been encouraged by a handful of retired players — including the former England midfielder Matt Le Tissier and Trevor Sinclair, once of Manchester City and West Ham — who have publicly identified on-field incidents as a possible consequence of vaccination. That Eriksen had not been vaccinated when he collapsed on a field during the Euros in June has made little difference.But incidents involving others are far from the only source of skepticism. According to reporting by The Times, several players have expressed concern that the vaccine might reduce their sperm count, and a number of doctors revealed they had faced questions about links to decreased virility particularly after the musician Nicki Minaj tweeted that a family friend had suffered “swollen testicles” as a result of the vaccine. (Both theories are unfounded.)Molango suggested that some players may have “concerns around religion,” too. Earlier this year, the P.F.A. and the Premier League arranged for Jonathan Van Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer — who has regularly used soccer-themed metaphors during his public statements — to address the captains of the league’s 20 clubs in a bid to encourage more players to be vaccinated.During the meeting, he was asked if it was true the vaccines contained alcohol — a concern for Muslim players. He confirmed that the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was alcohol-free, but acknowledged that others could contain trace amounts. But the amounts were so minuscule, he told the captains, that “there was probably more alcohol in the bread you ate this morning.”Others have “questions around the credibility” of those encouraging them to be vaccinated, Molango said. Some players have noted, too, that it was deemed safe for them to return to work last year, before the vaccines had been developed, and that they did not appreciate now being told to be vaccinated in order to keep on playing.In some cases, that has crystallized into something more implacable: an ideological refusal to have the shot. Most players, though, are more hesitant than opposed, team employees said — inclined to think that as healthy young men, they will not suffer even if they contract the virus, and therefore do not need to take whatever risk there may or may not be in a vaccine. Their bodies are their livelihoods, after all, and many have told medical staff members at their clubs that they would not take anything that is not irrefutably safe.And yet that does not fully explain why players in the Premier League — the overwhelming majority of whom are not British, let alone English — should be more resistant than their peers in other major leagues.While the proportion of Premier League players vaccinated is broadly similar to the number of people in their age group to have been inoculated in England, elite soccer is hardly a representative sample. It is, after all, gleefully international. The more apt parallel, then, may be with Serie A and La Liga and the others, where the mix of professionals is almost as global as it is in the Premier League, and where vaccination rates are far higher.The Premier League contends it has done as much as it reasonably can do to persuade its players to accept the inoculations. Van Tam not only addressed the captains of the league’s clubs but also released a video, highlighting the importance of vaccination and dispelling myths, to reinforce the message. He has visited teams in person. Other clubs, struggling to persuade their holdouts to be vaccinated, have been offered visits from experts eager to answer questions and allay fears.The clubs, too, have “played their part,” as Molango put it. Many have invited medical teams into their training facilities to make it as easy as possible for players to get a shot. At Liverpool, Jürgen Klopp has been an outspoken advocate of the “moral” imperative to be vaccinated. Leeds United officials have made vaccination a nonnegotiable part of a player’s duty to his teammates, and at other teams players have embraced vaccinations after being shaken by the experiences of teammates who tested positive, or the effect that Covid-related deaths have had on friends and colleagues.Other clubs, though, have been accused of being too light a touch, of not offering enough guidance to players early on, of giving the illusion that there was no real urgency. That, critics say, created a space in which misinformation could flourish. One Premier League team initially encouraged players to be vaccinated on their own time. When that did not receive much response, executives dropped the hint again. It was only after a few weeks that the club, realizing it had hit a wall, took the step of inviting a vaccination team to the training facility.Clubs’ approaches, though, are starting to shift. This summer, a number of transfer deals included clauses written into player contracts stating that vaccination was mandatory. Agents expect that to become the norm over the next few months: Klopp, like Aston Villa’s Steven Gerrard and Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta, has made it clear that his club would prefer not to sign unvaccinated players.Internal measures are growing more strict, too. At least one Premier League club no longer permits unvaccinated players to dine with their teammates, and requires them to change into their training gear either before arriving or in their car, instead of in the dressing room. The Premier League is now considering adapting its protocols to make similar precautions more widespread.The hope, among those charged with keeping the players safe, is that a more active, more draconian stance will prove decisive among all but a few ardent holdouts. Until then, all the league can do is try to counteract the misinformation, change all the minds it can, and hope that the games can go on. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Chelsea Proves a Point While Collecting One at Liverpool

      by

      A red card put Chelsea to the test, but a draw won with control, composure and calm felt like much more.LIVERPOOL, England — Romelu Lukaku’s second half was not an especially glamorous one. There was a lot of running, darting into the slivers of space on either side of Liverpool’s central defenders, hoping for a ball that rarely came. There was a substantial amount of tussling and wrestling with Joel Matip, in particular, the two scrabbling for every inch of ground.There were not, conversely, many touches: only 20 in all after halftime, not quite one every two minutes. There was only, in the entire span of that 45 minutes, one scoring chance, a single moment that Lukaku spent his entire night trying to conjure, a snapshot from just inside the penalty area. He caught it well. No sooner had it left his foot than Virgil van Dijk blocked it.Such is the lot of the striker, of course: all of those moments of glory, as they wheel away, their arms aloft, adulation pouring forth upon them from the stands are the product of countless hours of unseen, unyielding and often underappreciated work. Every goal is reward for all of the effort silently expended. Lukaku, now in his second tenure at Chelsea, has been doing this long enough to be used to it.Even then, though, Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Liverpool will have felt like an arduous evening. Circumstances had dictated that Lukaku spent much of the second half looking backward, rather than forward. Chelsea had been leading, through a clever header from Kai Havertz, with the clock ticking toward halftime when Reece James handled the ball on the goal line.James was — eventually — sent off, Mohamed Salah converted the penalty, and Anfield smelled blood. From that moment, it was clear that Chelsea’s second half would be dedicated to holding out, not pushing on, and Lukaku, restored to the club for $135 million this summer, would endure an evening of silent toil.Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku tangled with Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk, right, and Joel Matip all afternoon.Peter Powell/ReutersThanks to both his cost — Lukaku is now the most expensive player in soccer history in terms of cumulative transfer fees, at least until Kylian Mbappé joins Real Madrid — and that status, there is a natural inclination to assume that the final piece in the puzzle is also the most important, that this Chelsea team is now constructed for, and around, Romelu Lukaku.His first display, at Arsenal last week, did little to disabuse anyone of that notion. He played there with all of the intent and menace of an avenging hero, scoring within 15 minutes of the start of his second spell in England; he may well have single-handedly robbed Pablo Marí, his direct opponent that day, of any scrap of self-belief for several years.His second game, on Saturday, served as a reminder that there can only be a final piece if the puzzle is nearly complete. Lukaku was, through no fault of his own, an optional extra for much of this game, against one of Chelsea’s putative rivals for the title, and yet the club’s traveling fans still greeted the final whistle of a roar of approval.Thomas Tuchel’s team had not won, of course, not in any strict, literal sense, but championships are built on moral victories, too, and this one was resounding. Chelsea — even playing at a disadvantage after James departed, in front of a baying crowd, against a team with one of the most potent attacking tridents in world soccer — produced a display of quite stunning control, and composure, and calm.There was no dispute that the ball hit Chelsea defender Reece James on the line, keeping it out of the goal.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe referee, Anthony Taylor, deemed it a penalty, and a red card.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChelsea’s captain César Azpilicueta, and nearly everyone else in blue, disagreed.Peter Powell/ReutersFor much of the first half, Chelsea had frustrated its host, seemingly reducing the great green sprawl of Anfield — the open expanses in which Liverpool thrives — to nothing but a postage stamp. Every way that Jürgen Klopp’s team turned, there was a blue jersey. Chelsea has an inexorable ability to fill space, to turn every alley blind.Liverpool had been growing a little rushed, a little ragged as it sought a way out of that vise, with van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold at one point reduced to despairing loudly at each other over the width of the field: Van Dijk wanted his teammate to push forward; Alexander-Arnold could not see where he was supposed to go.The penalty, and the red card, alleviated that pressure, but it redoubled Chelsea’s determination. Tuchel reorganized: Thiago Silva came on in the heart of defense, César Azpilicueta shifted out to the right, the indefatigable Mason Mount played as a holding midfielder and an attacking midfielder and an auxiliary right wing back, too.Chelsea had lost N’Golo Kanté to an injury at the break, a third cause of regret, and yet his spirit seemed to suffuse his team. In 45 minutes in which Liverpool exerted a monopoly on the ball, in which Lukaku barely featured, it did not create a single, clear-cut chance. There were a handful of efforts from range, but no way through, no way around, no way out. Even Klopp, in the aftermath, could barely contain his admiration. “A man extra is not a massive advantage against a side with the defending skills they have,” he said.Liverpool’s Andy Robertson with Chelsea’s Mason Mount.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is this, as much as the threat of Lukaku, that makes Chelsea such a threat: the air of invulnerability, of redoubtable stolidity, that Tuchel has bestowed on his team in his eight months as coach. Chelsea has the firepower to see off the majority of the Premier League’s teams. But just as important is that it has the battery to keep out the great and the good.It is easy, in the frenzy of the summer, as new players arrive to garland old teams, to believe that what matters is who can call upon the most talent, that titles are handed out to the sides with the most dazzling squad lists and the greatest expenditures.But that is not quite how it works. There is another stage to the process: those resources have to be fashioned into a functioning unit, all of those gifted individuals crafted into a team. Lukaku may yet prove the final piece in the puzzle for Chelsea. What matters more, though, is that Tuchel had already put the rest of it together. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Soccer

      At Euro 2020, No Semifinalist Is an Island

      by

      Denmark and Italy borrowed ideas from Spain. Spain has learned from Germany. And England has taken everything it can from anywhere it can get it.LEEDS, England — Kalvin Phillips came home, for the first time, as a fully fledged England international with four jerseys as souvenirs. He had asked his new teammates to autograph one, destined to be framed and mounted on a wall at home. Two others were reserved for his mother and grandmother, as tokens of gratitude for years of support. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      After Stumbling to the Finish Line, Liverpool Clinches Champions League Place

      by

      A win at Anfield guaranteed the club a place in the Champions League next season, but only a brief respite before it plunges into soccer’s new reality.LIVERPOOL, England — The goals arrived just as the nerves were fraying and the anxiety mounting, just as the 10,000 fans inside Anfield for the first time in a long time were recalling that watching soccer, live and in the flesh, is not how memory might have made it seem. It is not all celebration and carnival and song. Most of the time, it is nothing but stress.In the end, Liverpool’s road on the final day of the Premier League season was a straight one; the twists and turns would come elsewhere. Jürgen Klopp’s team needed to win to clinch a place in next season’s Champions League, and it duly delivered a victory by beating Crystal Palace, 2-0. The fretting and the furrowing would be for Chelsea and Leicester City, the other two teams in the chase.But Anfield did not know that, 20 minutes in, when Leicester took the lead at home against Tottenham and Liverpool was toiling against Palace, the sort of obdurate and organized opponent that had made the club’s winter so bleak, and for a brief moment the table rumbled and Klopp’s team was fifth, out in the cold.Fans had not been here for the six consecutive home defeats that derailed Liverpool’s season: they had all happened in a sterile and silent Anfield, but they had left a scar. And so as the news from Leicester filtered through, the mood seemed to shift. The songs, initially jubilant, felt a little more urgent.It took some time for the fans to set aside their stress and celebrate again.Pool photo by Paul EllisSadio Mané’s opening goal proved a potent antidote, for a while. Chelsea was losing at Aston Villa, Leicester winning. But as the clock ticked, the specter of the worst-case scenario appeared. Liverpool’s margins were fine. One mistake and a goal elsewhere and there would, at the last, be a sting in the tail.Anfield seemed on edge once more. The songs had stopped. In their stead came impatient rumblings whenever danger seemed to bubble, disappointed groans when an attack broke down. It is not only fans who might have romanticized the reality of being at a game, of the presence of a crowd. It can inject energy and vim and zest into players. But its demands can also cow and daunt and unnerve them.It was at that point, with the game and the day and the season entering its final few minutes, that Mané scored again. Anfield exhaled. The news elsewhere was good: Chelsea was losing, and so, too, was Leicester, kicking away the reprieve it had been offered. Liverpool had left it late to be sure, but it was safe.The songs could start again; the final odds and ends could be tied up. The departing Georginio Wijnaldum was afforded a rapturous ovation by the fans, and a guard of honor by his teammates. There was a lap of appreciation. Coming back to Anfield would bring a happy return.Liverpool didn’t need it in the end, but Gareth Bale and Tottenham provided some late — and vital — assistance at Leicester.Pool photo by Shaun BotterillBy Liverpool’s recent standards, of course, this season still goes down as a disappointment. In 2019, the club’s last game was a victory in the Champions League final. Last year, belatedly, its final appearance at Anfield was to lift the Premier League trophy. Merely securing a seat at Europe’s top table is not what Klopp and his players aimed to do this year.But all achievements are relative. Liverpool is not alone in having suffered a spree of injuries this season, but it is not easy to come up with another team — perhaps Leicester aside — that has been quite so hard hit. Klopp has been without his first-choice central defense since November. He lost his only specialist backup in January.The two midfielders Klopp deputized as back-line cover missed considerable spells, too (one, the captain Jordan Henderson, only returned to the substitutes’ ranks on Sunday). When he said, on the eve of this game, that Manchester City would not have been crowned champion if it had suffered similarly, particularly in the condensed schedule of the pandemic, it was treated as a barb, an unbecoming serving of sour grapes. He did have a point, though.Claiming third place, in those circumstances, may not represent a great triumph, but it still ranks as a considerable achievement. As recently as March, Liverpool was in free fall, risking compounding the hundreds of millions of dollars lost as a result of the pandemic by missing out on the riches of the Champions League.Klopp, though, has forged an impressive unanimity of purpose since then. Liverpool’s last 10 games have brought eight wins, and no defeats. It has been the in-form team in English soccer for the last two months. It is understandable that Klopp’s vision of the future is bullish, centered on the belief that when his squad is restored to fitness, Liverpool will be “the team nobody wants to play” once more.It is not, though, quite so straightforward. The pandemic might have had a more direct impact on teams like Arsenal and Tottenham, but its effect on Liverpool should not be underestimated.The club has won no little acclaim in recent years for its astute use of the transfer market: spending big when necessary — on the likes of Alisson and Virgil van Dijk — but also on its ability to snuffle out comparative bargains: Andy Robertson, Wijnaldum and even, to some extent, Mohamed Salah.Such liberal spending may not be possible as the club wrestles with the financial black hole opened by the pandemic. It will not be alone in that, of course. For Liverpool, though, just as worrying is the fact that it has only been able to spend that money because of its almost unrivaled ability to sell players.For Jürgen Klopp and James Milner, merely salvaging a Champions League place from this season was worth celebrating. Next year, the team and its fans will expect more.Pool photo by Paul EllisLiverpool has sold better than anyone in recent years, both in gleaning vast sums for its stars — the $170 million or so banked from Barcelona for Philippe Coutinho — and in haggling premium amounts for unwanted assets.It sold Dominic Solanke to Bournemouth for $22 million or so, and the backup goalkeeper Danny Ward to Leicester for $15 million. Danny Ings, Ryan Kent and Rafa Camacho — Ings aside, names hardly recalled at Anfield — raised about $50 million between them.Those are prices, though, that belong to another world, one of boundless money and limited thought. Liverpool will not be able to raise such eye-watering sums for Divock Origi and Xherdan Shaqiri and Marko Grujic and the rest this summer. If it harbored hopes of selling either Mané or Salah for a premium fee in order to finance the team’s next transformation, it is likely to be disappointed, too. For players of their age, the luxury market has stalled as well.Liverpool’s late run to the Champions League has, perhaps, drawn a little of the sting, given the club a little more elastic to play with as seeks to avoid such a narrow escape next year. With his injured stalwarts returning, Klopp is right to expect brighter things. But the road is not always as straight as it turned out to be at the end of a fraught and troubled campaign. There are still twists and turns, chicanes and hairpins, to negotiate. More