As Liverpool succeeded in another semi-final to set up another Wembley date, The Reds sent out a reminder of their status in world football…
LAST night was good.
Liverpool were dominant from start to finish. They made it to another domestic cup final. Performances all over the pitch were of the very highest level.
Good.
You look at Tottenham. Crisis ridden and thoroughly miserable. So many more questions than answers. Not climbing the mountain. Its apex fogged out in the distance.
You look at Newcastle. Maybe they’re climbing it again after falling back to the start point last season. You look at their reaction to beating Arsenal and reaching this final. You remember.
No such pomp and ceremony at Anfield last night. Job done and a brisk retirement to warmth and comfort. Blanketed by the notion of this simply being what is expected of us.
Arne Slot says this a lot. Almost like he made peace with it before taking the job. If perfection isn’t the ultimate goal, we’re all wasting our time.
He also knew he’d inherited winners. A dressing room setting its own standards. Everyone a runner. Everyone a potential match winner. This is Liverpool in 2025. Who are we to argue?
Maybe, this is what it feels like to have climbed the mountain. Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool was all about the journey and its excitement. The unknowns and challenges were so intoxicating because you trusted you were on the right path.
Achievement can come with a sense of emptiness. Football dominance can breed contemptible arrogance. Liverpool isn’t at the stage of dynasty, but they have certainly won a lot more than they haven’t since 2016.
This is to be expected, but not taken for granted. How can you ever take Virgil van Dijk or Mohamed Salah for granted? That itself is tantamount to such arrogance on a grand scale.
I suppose the thing to always remember is that this club is massive. Always keep it in your pocket that no matter when you grew up or where, Liverpool Football Club is so huge that everyone including itself have been slow to realise its potential.
And it’s only growing. Liverpool’s official website shared data last summer which proved they were the most-engaged club in the Premier League – registering more than 1.5 billion fan engagements – and also the most-viewed on social media with 11.9 billion views through its innovative social media channels during 2023-24.
Pre-season tours offer you a personal glimpse into this surge of support, historic and post-Klopp. In the USA this past summer, there were so many new and old supporters craving knowledge and cultural experiences of Liverpool for themselves which was fantastic to see.
It’s maybe the only time in my life that it carries the requisite weight of being branded biggest in the world.
To grow up in Liverpool also at times makes this hard to comprehend. There is so much neglect and a sense of having to stand up for itself as a place, that such royalty status here seems at times accidental.
I suppose this is only my experience.
Back to football, we’ve set up a tantalising cup final where Wembley will be fizzing. We’ve set up a February which now looks daunting, but full of opportunity after the Aston Villa rearranged fixture.
Suddenly, the clouds have broken and it’s all opened up for Liverpool. Last season, we hit the peak in March and everything crumbled in the space of two weeks.
But we’re not flat out. We’re not so brilliant that you can’t see it being any better than this, now.
We’ll need some luck. We’ll inevitably have to hold our nerve at some point. But Liverpool are going at a fine pace towards the finish line.
Maybe this is what it feels like, finally, to have reached the top of the mountain. We shouldn’t take it for granted. But then maybe we should because these are the requirements.
I don’t hate the feeling of this being just another final.
In the words of the captain, it’s without question ‘what we do’.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
