Always Building

ARTICLE BY MATTY

It’s been an odd summer, especially this past month. I’ve had loads of fun recently, sure. One of my best friends got married in NYC and the overall experience was probably the best few days of my life. I got to go to my first concert. 23 is an odd place to be. I’m not quite an adult yet but I’ve got way more responsibilities than a kid. I have some things in my life but an insatiable desire for more. I’m single again, but at least this time it was mutual. Most recently, after some reflection with a friend, I feel like I’m trying to harmonize and balance who I am. To finally step outside the relative safety and comfort of my existence and truly push for the best. To dive headfirst into the unknown and try to swim in it.

Anyways, I’m writing this now because it’s been over a year since we last saw a truly wonderful Liverpool FC game and I’m getting depressed just thinking about it. Whatever magic from the Klopp era is surely gone and now we must try to move on and once again swim in the unknown. We chucked everything related to Klopp into the ocean long ago, perhaps as a statement from management that they didn’t particularly love the guy. Only now have we realized that perhaps there was some error in trusting ego rather than results. The man who can use both his mind and his instinct to make decisions is a powerful one, and they typically make more enemies than friends. I get the sense Klopp wasn’t loved by many behind the scenes, but he got the job done and was universally praised for it. The people in the room who were jealous of Klopp’s power and personality seemed to think they could do the job better and instead they’ve completely fucked us raw.

You’ve all read my work, you all know how my brain functions, and this is the main reason why architecture and specifically city planning appeal so much for me. I think in systems. I enjoy processes. Yet I’m not so entranced by numbers to think that they tell the whole story. There’s always a human element that stats can never articulate. A human element that fewer and fewer people seem to understand as society and culture homogenize into one robotic system controlled by numbers and programming. Look at football now and try to tell me it’s better than it was even five years ago. Everybody plays the exact same way and it’s tedious, it’s boring, it’s defensive. Guardiola and Klopp have left the game because they were tired of having to deal with it on a weekly basis. They were tired of having to continue to motivate a new generation of players who just aren’t wired the same. Players who hunt for personal glory rather than team success. Who hunt for money rather than championships. Good for them, I suppose. They see the game as the business it’s become and want to take full advantage. It just seems a bit hollow to me now. There’s no heart, no passion, no fire. The world is fiery in its glory, it burns with its beauty, but only for those willing to properly seek it out.

My dear friend Dan, newly married to the love of his life, is probably one of the closest things I have to a clone. Especially when it comes to sports, we have the same mind. It’s how we got to enjoy each other’s company in the first place. Baseball is our shared joy, the sport we grew up watching, our first love. Baseball, much like football, has been overrun by analytics nerds. Nerds who never played the game but can crunch a spreadsheet. The numbers and only the numbers tell them who’s good and who isn’t. Life isn’t so black and white. Neither is sport. Dan and I, our brains are very similar. We’re builders, in slightly different ways but builders nonetheless. We observe sport through a team building lens. Why a certain move was smart, why another move wasn’t.

Dan and I stand out, I think, because we don’t disrespect the old school way of thinking. We understand there’s a still a place in baseball for batting average, traditional stats, or in the case of football, actual goals and assists. The things that actually show up on a scoresheet and can be easily understood. We also appreciate analytical statistics that create a more full picture of a player and a team. We understand there’s more than just stats that create a winning organization or club. There’s a standard of character, mental toughness, and wisdom. There’s an understanding that the ideal player has a proper balance of humility and ego; he’s humble enough to work at his craft every day, but confident enough to believe he’s the best in the world every single game he plays. You can tell who truly loves the game and who’s there to collect a paycheck. Even more than just players and management, there’s an identity, an ethos that permeates through an organization or club. A particular style of play, a particular devotion to the fans, a particular way that the organization views is the best way to play the game. Standards that bolster the mentality of players and get the best out of their ability. The best organizations in sports know and understand all of this.

Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool had an identity: we will create stars, blending character and mental toughness with statistical analysis and player development, and we will outwork you on and off the pitch. The best teams usually play better than the sum of their parts, because the things that don’t show up on the stat sheet show up in spades in the results. Jordan Henderson and James Milner ran a tight ship in training as Klopp’s eyes and ears on the field, and it showed. Klopp took uncut gems like Robertson, Trent and Firmino, then turned them all into diamonds. He developed the youth academy, understanding the special bond between the club and its supporters. That it means more to have one of your own living out his dream in red. He was relentless, more importantly he seemed to understand the full picture. Even in the latter years, when the transfers didn’t quite hit as much, he still got a lot out of Nunez, Mac Allister, Endo and Szoboszlai.

All of this is to say that Klopp gave Liverpool an identity, an identity that they are now struggling to find again. The youth academy players who endeared themselves in Klopp’s last season were almost all sold, with only James McConnell and Lewis Koumas still around. Trent and now Curtis Jones have left, there are no more Scousers in the team. Most of the old guard who previously held the high standards are gone, and predictably you have seen those standards slip. The transfers have had a lot of talent but not much if any cohesion. Some players are simply too small for the big, rough and tumble Premier League. Some players just can’t be arsed to defend. Some just run like headless chickens. No direction, no purpose, no intent. It stood out to me when Iraola said during preseason that nobody in the squad could deliver a high intensity press for more than 30 minutes. That was striking to me, indicative of a team that’s fallen far off the path of success and into the indulgence of the self.

Analytics have taken over the management side, something we should’ve seen coming when Hughes’s introductory press conference was highlighted by his remark “we will always look to take advantage of an opportunity”. The Chiesa signing for example made some sense at the time but was a market opportunity as much as anything else. Same with Isak, same with Wirtz, Frimpong and Kerkez and Hugo, and now Munoz. Expensive? Absolutely. A fit for the league? Some are and some aren’t. Character? Who cares, it’s good value for money. Until the two record signings more or less flop. And now we’re selling Gakpo, mere months after losing his son, to a rival, because Bradley Barcola wants out of PSG. Who cares if Barcola is still a raw player who might be too light for the league? It’s good value! Or at least the analytic wonder kids think it is. Character? Who cares. The sports world has become an extension of gambling and betting odds. I’m becoming sick of it.

I used to love how Klopp built his teams. Everything made sense and had an order. There were times where it sucked, such as not having a fourth CB the year Virgil got mauled by Pickford. Keita and Ox were expensive and, while they had times where they shone bright, they were ultimately too inconsistent for the prices paid. But overall, rarely ever a mistake. Even Ox was loved in the dressing room for his personality. Keita had something about him where everybody in the room seemed to love him and wanted him to succeed. That stuff matters. I honestly can’t make sense of what the club have done post-Klopp. Hugo Ekitike was a fine signing and we saw how quickly he adapted to the league. Instead of spending a British record fee on Isak, we could’ve signed a proper DM and started future planning to replace Mo and Virgil when their contracts were up. Maybe you could’ve kept and developed Elliott rather than buy Wirtz, another small attacking midfielder who’d take time to adjust to the league. Liverpool were never the club who chose flash over substance, they chose wisely and built their players up. It annoys me we now shop at the big boys table and pay big boy prices when we achieved our success doing the opposite, finding the uncut gems at cut rate prices. It annoys me we used to place value on things that matter and now we seemingly don’t. Putting a squad together doesn’t matter. Buying up a bunch of big names and trying to make it work seems to be the strategy. It won’t work. Just look at United.

This season will ultimately do a lot to determine if Liverpool are set to live through the fate that post-Ferguson Man United have gone through. Impatient fans demanding big signings and big names, realizing the big names need structure around them that’s missing, blame the owners and the management, then when the manager gets sacked they demand more big names and the cycle repeats. Liverpool needs to figure out their shit and fast. Iraola seems like a good manager even if he seems like a blank slate with the fans. Personality being more or less ripped clean away from people frustrates me, but it’s a natural result of society being what it is. It sucks but what can we do. I digress. Liverpool need to discover their identity again. What they want the club to represent. Everything else falls apart if they don’t know that. High pressing, entertaining football seems like a good start but rings hollow to me. It focuses on the style and nothing else. What type of people will work for the club, play for the club? Will you respect the Scousers trying to break through? I guess I’m just asking for the club to be a little more human. If any club can be, it’s this one. I truly believe that.