Liverpool have plenty of experience with bottling tournaments, yet they still somehow have a chip on their shoulder after their latest. Chelsea can learn and teach some lessons in light of Liverpool’s Champions League exit.
Call them sore losers. Call them poor winners. Call them the Arsenal of Merseyside. Or just boil it down to one word: Liverpool. Jurgen Klopp rallied a press that does not need to be rallied in order to flock to his banner with his comments after Liverpool’s defeat to Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. Klopp ranted about how Atletico did not play proper football or good football, telling the ever-ensorcelled press exactly what they wanted to hear: style matters more than results, and Klopp speaks from the heart.
Chelsea have been here before, many times, especially under Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte. Not every attempt to win came off, but criticisms for the loss paled in comparison to criticisms of how they lost. Here are a few things Klopp and his devotees should keep in mind for when this happens again.
1. Only one stat matters
Stats and data make for great conversations, tiresome tactical blogs and necessary context among teams’ staffs. But they don’t actually count for anything.
Keyboard wizards who shape their beards and dye their teeth to look like Klopp’s can gush over Liverpool’s 34 shots, 62 crosses, 71% possession and 2.8 – 0.9 xG advantage. But the only thing that matters is 3-2, and therefore 4-2. And while it ended up not mattering, it could have mattered that Atletico scored three away goals to Liverpool’s zero.
2. Dominance in defeat is actually worse
If all you saw was Liverpool’s stat sheet – some of which I listed above – you’d be forgiven for thinking it was from Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea. Like Chelsea last year, and like Manchester City in Antonio Conte’s unjustly reviled 1-0 loss in 2017, Liverpool did a lot without actually doing anything at all.
Liverpool’s statistical dominance makes their loss even more galling, and more of a sign of some fundamental weaknesses in the team that Watford and Chelsea exploited before Atletico Madrid. Liverpool had all that time on the ball, all that space in which to operate, all those chances to score… and they still lost. The stats that superficially show dominance actually reveal impotence. If a team can have 71% possession, 62 crosses, 34 shots and all the rest over 120 minutes and still not win – at home! – maybe they’re not as good, or maybe they simply met a fair defeat at the hands of a better opponent.
Building on #1 above, if football is about results, maybe we should work backwards from there. Instead of saying “All the supporting and underlying stats are strong. Why didn’t they win?” perhaps our approach should be: “They didn’t win. These supporting and underlying stats are those of a loser. Proceed.”
At the very least, it would break us of the facile reasoning that possession and passing are inherent goods.
3. Jurgen Klopp missed a chance to educate
Jurgen Klopp is to leadership what Pep Guardiola is to tactics. He has reached the point where everything he says – be it sage, banal, impulsive or calculated – is received as wisdom from the mountain.
That carries with it a certain responsibility: when you know people are listening, you should say things worth hearing.
Klopp’s comments became the authoritative reference for numerous pundits and columnists to say that Diego Simeone did not put on a masterclass, that Atletico Madrid did not outwork or outplay Liverpool, or that Simeone only won by nullifying the real football played by Liverpool.
Klopp should know that what Simeone did was as difficult as any gegenpressung or Guardiola-style exploitation of the half space via zone 12. Especially since Klopp is regarded as the top man-manager in the game, he surely knows what a feat it is to ask highly skilled forwards like Joao Felix to defend deep in a 4-4-2, without even having a forward linger up top for a counterattack.
Simeone achieves a level of buy-in that few managers will ever reach. From getting them to buy-in, Simeone then trains them all to execute a mentally demanding plan for the complete game.
Chelsea saw several times in 2017 how a single, momentary lapse of concentration on defence is the difference between victory and defeat. One player needs to blink at the wrong time for the team to fall behind. Centrebacks are trained for that. Attacking midfielders and skilled forwards are not. But under Diego Simeone they are.
Simeone presented a tactical, technical and psychological masterclass. What Atletico Madrid did may not be beautiful or entertaining, but it is certainly not easy, not for anyone involved.
Jurgen Klopp knows this. Sadly, he didn’t tell the world because he was drowning his sorrows.