Sacrifice in Team Sport
AN ARTICLE BY MATTY
<<When we look back on the Liverpool careers of Gini Wijnaldum, Roberto Firmino, and Jordan Henderson, among others in the Klopp era, I personally will remember them less for their goals or their impact on the scoresheet, but rather for their sacrifice to make the system work. All three of them are perfect examples of players that make an impact beyond the score sheet that makes them nearly irreplaceable. And that’s what I want to talk about today. That you can have amazing players getting plaudits everywhere like Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, Andy Robertson, Trent, Virgil, Alisson, but they don’t shine without the workmanlike contributions of Firmino, Wijnaldum and Henderson. For in a team sport, with eleven players on the pitch at any given time, not everyone can be the world’s best. Not everyone can be the superstar carrying the side. Sacrifices must be made to achieve the ultimate successes.
Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid, upon the arrival of David Beckham from United and the departure of Claude Makelele to Chelsea, said “Yes, you’ve added gold plating to the Bentley, but you’ve removed the whole fucking engine!” By counting stats, Beckham was perceived to be more impactful than Makelele. But Makelele was the glue that held Madrid’s midfield together, the protector of the back four that allowed Zidane to work his magic further upfield. Almost predictably, Madrid’s league form fell off considerably without Makelele, proving his worth as one of the greatest defensive midfielders of his generation. Not saying Beckham is a bad player, neither did Zidane. But he wasn’t needed at Madrid like Makelele was.
Likewise, I can’t imagine Roberto Firmino doing what he’s done for us anywhere else, but he’s been needed all these years for his unique style of play. Klopp once said there is no system without Bobby. And while we’ve become less dependent on him in the past couple years, he’s still an integral piece of our success whenever he’s on the field. His awareness of drawing defenders in and holding up play allowed Mane and Salah to get 1v1 situations for many years, which created many goals between the pair of wingers.
Then you get to the midfield. While I often liked to think about how we’d look if we had some more offensive-minded players in that area, such as Thiago, Wijnaldum and Henderson performed their role beautifully in our team. Gini was a brilliant presser, but most importantly was extremely versatile. He was excellent at ball retention and had a high IQ which allowed us to control the game regardless of whether or not he had the ball. Hendo, meanwhile, was simply magnificent in the year we won the title, filling in flawlessly for Fabinho at the base of the midfield or helping out further up the pitch. Again, a high IQ allowed him to cover for Trent’s forward runs while also being able to get in on the attack when the time called for it. Gini and Hendo didn’t score much, but when they did, the goals were important. With Trent and Robbo, we didn’t need creativity from the midfield at that particular time. We needed balance, and Wijnaldum and Henderson provided it.
As in everything else in life, balance is the key to true success in football. A balance of youth and veteran leadership, of attack and defense. At its peak, the Liverpool that won four trophies in the span of a year had its entire starting eleven between the ages of 26 and 30. The prime of their careers. They’d built up chemistry over years of playing together and became an unstoppable winning machine. Outside of the second half of last season, I feel we haven’t quite been able to recapture the magic that the 2018-2020 group had. We forget that we didn’t lose a league game until the end of February when we won the league.
I must admit it puzzles me a bit. You could make the argument that the squad we had last year and even this year, on paper, was better than that group. We’ve added so much class since then with Thiago, Jota, Elliott, Diaz, Konate, Tsimikas, now Nunez and Carvalho. And yet it still hasn’t felt quite the same to me. That air of invincibility, of dominance, has definitely been gone this season and was gone for most of the two seasons prior. Perhaps, as machines typically are, as soon as some cogs age or are taken out, the machine runs slower or different than it used to. Let’s hope another winning machine is in the works.
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