Liverpool’s previous season can easily be characterized as a massive let down. Coming off of the high of their second Premier League title in 5 years – after a 30 year drought – it’s tough to really call a victory lap of a season a let down. But, firstly, Liverpool went through the summer transfer window and signaled intent by splashing copious amounts of cash (perhaps dubiously in hindsight) on an attacking refresh that, to this point, have not exactly lit the world on fire: Hugo Ekitike, Alexander
Isak, and Florian Wirtz. To barely scrape into the Champions League, then, led to the launching of many inquiries.
In the end, Arne Slot was sacked. Just a few days ago, Michael Edward’s resigned his post at the top of a new footballing structure within FSG. Rumors of Richard Hughes’ departure – with an offer from Saudi Arabia long bandied about – seem to gather more smoke every day. And while Edwards’ decision wasn’t owed to the club’s performance in the previous season, it does feel pretty clear that the club is now experiencing the growing pains we’d all presumed would come when transitioning from having an iconoclastic figure like Jurgen Klopp at the helm. The tricky headwinds may have been delayed, but the LFC ship well and truly caught in the middle of it.
To that end, the Liverpool Echo wrote up an article that referenced a wide ranging interview that Dominik Szoboszlai gave to French press. In it, he discussed his view on the previous season, playing out of his preferred position, and even his thoughts on flair players (not really his thing). What stood out to me, though, was a brief section in the piece where he notes that, in reference to the passing of teammate Diogo Jota, the club never really got together to talk about it. Here are his words:
“The thing is, we never actually talked about it among ourselves. Everyone kept their feelings about the tragedy to themselves, and I don’t know if that was a good thing because none of us was able to share what we were going through with the rest of the group. I don’t know what we should have done; we’ll never know.”
I have generally felt that while Arne Slot was likely the wrong person for the job long-term, I would have been fine to see this incoming season with him here. But, if I’m being honest, the slow drip of news from players – namely, Ibrahima Konate and now Szoboszlai – has made me pull back on that. Not necessarily that Slot couldn’t have figured out the tactical issues (though, honestly, I am increasingly less convinced of that now when making some presumptions about what he’d hoped to implement in terms of style of play vs the results we got), but more because the giant unknown to me was how the club as a unit were processing the heaviness of the loss of a teammate and friend.
Now, while the club were asked about it publicly and obviously dealt with it at every match, it appears that the players were largely left to deal with the issue on their own. Not as a unit, but as individual players. I don’t know that there’s necessarily rights and wrongs when it comes to dealing with heavy emotions like grief, but if there were, I feel pretty good in guessing that isolation would be one of those things that you just don’t do in moments like this.
I don’t want to re-write my assessment and understanding of the season with such a tiny sliver of insight, but when you consider that these comments also follow-up on the fact that Konate had to deal with the sudden illness and death of his father during the season, it suddenly makes sense to me why this team looked so disjointed. I sensed they all might still be dealing with the grief – I did not know they were likely all dealing with it at a distance from one another.
And, for me, that’s such a deep dereliction of duty on behalf of the coach. Team leadership not managing to at least bring the group together to process or work through player-leaders (this is an indictment of them as well) to set up something regular feels not just like lost opportunities to ensure that the players were getting the support they need, but smacks of incompetence at this point.
I don’t know how real Konate’s head was turned. Or, I guess, how real those rumors of him opting to re-sign really were. But I do know that if it were me and I’d lost both a teammate and a family member in less than a year, and sat through a locker room where no one processed theses things together…well. I guess what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t exactly have the kind of fond memories of a stable and welcoming environment.
A thing I sensed at the end of year was that most were glad for it all to end. Seeing the player exits, even allowing that most executive transitions lead to quite a shift in terms of personnel, it felt like a lot. Szobo’s words, though, provide a bit of weight to the things we’d been speculating about.
Here’s hoping that Iraola proves himself to be a bit of a better man manager than his predecessor. No one will be able to emulate Klopp, but connecting with your players is a basic function of being a head coach. And it looks like the squad, perhaps, needed that more than anything last year.
