Jurgen Klopp has revealed the moment he started to believe it could be Liverpool’s year in the race for the Premier League title.
And the Reds boss insists his team will not “get lazy” as they seek to build on their first league championship since 1990.
Liverpool’s coronation as champions was confirmed last Thursday following Manchester City’s defeat at Chelsea, with Klopp and his players watching events at Stamford Bridge unfold together at the team's hotel, before partying long into the night.
With seven games remaining, it is the most comprehensive success in top-flight history. Klopp’s side, with 28 wins and two draws from 31 league fixtures, have laid waste to the opposition. They need 15 points from the last 21 available to set a new all-time points total for a single top-flight season, and are still on course to become the first top-division side to win every home game in a campaign since 1892.
Klopp, unsurprisingly, beamed when asked to reflect on his team’s remarkable campaign.
And asked to pinpoint a specific moment when he knew he had a team capable of winning the league, he chose the weekend immediately before the country went into lockdown in March, when Liverpool beat Bournemouth 2-1 at Anfield and then watched as Manchester City lost 2-0 against Manchester United the following day.
He told reporters: “I never thought that we will win the league until pretty late in this season, but [the fact] that we can win the league, obviously I learned last year.
“I knew as well that pretty much everything has to click with each other just because of the unbelievable strong opponent [Manchester City].
“Last year when we were seven, eight, nine points up, I knew we had a long way to go. Maybe I thought we could win the league at 60-70 minutes in the City-Leicester game [in May 2019] until [Vincent] Kompany finished my dreams!
“This year I had a moment when we won against Bournemouth and City lost against Manchester United. It was a big gap.
“I didn’t think we would win the league but it was a big gap and it felt quite good, but that is it pretty much.”
Goal
Liverpool had gone so close last season, earning 97 points and losing just one league game but finding themselves pipped at the post by a City side which won each of its last 14 matches.
This season, though, there was to be no cat-and-mouse contest. Klopp’s team hit the front early and simply zoomed away from their rivals. They were eight points clear after eight games, 10 ahead at Christmas, and led the table by an incredible 25 when the Premier League was suspended in March due to the coronavirus crisis.
They returned to action earlier this month, and needed only one game to get back into a familiar rhythm. An uninspiring draw away to Everton was followed by a 4-0 demolition of Crystal Palace in Anfield’s first behind-closed-doors fixture – a result which all-but-ensured they would be league champions.
“The Palace game sums it up, sums us up,” Klopp said. “What these boys did, they did for the club, for the people and for what we stand for.
“Nobody was there. But we were still together. And it really sums us up. Because it is like they wear the Liverpool shirt in this moment and they go with all they have. Whenever, wherever, whichever time, whatever necessary, they go. And I love that.
“That is what made us a team, what brought us into the position we are in, it is all in this game; 86th minute, losing the ball, chasing it down, winning it back and shooting on the goal of Palace like you have never scored before. That desire, such desire.
“So that was exceptional, and it summed us up. That was the moment when I thought ‘yes, we will be champions. We are not yet but we will be. It was the perfect moment.”
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Klopp smiled when discussing Liverpool’s next challenge; to keep going, to try to retain their crown, to get even better, even more dominant.
He said: “About defending the title - that is really a funny thing. I have heard people say it is only a real thing if we win twice in a row - that is really funny! That is obviously an English thing.
“What I can say is this team will not stop wanting it. That doesn’t mean we get it, but everyone will see that we want to be successful again. That is how we did it all the time.”
Klopp added: “People will be afraid that these boys will get lazy. These boys, like they showed at Crystal Palace, they cannot get lazy. It is just not in their nature.
“I am still here, I will still have a little word with them and convince them before and after we play. We will not stop.
“I felt relief, of course, when we won it. But it’s not like you are relieved you have reached the pinnacle and that’s it now – there is nothing to come. I think there is a lot to come. We have to fight for it and we will try.”