[EL] Sevilla (N) - Post Match

[Jaymo]

UEFA have charged Liverpool fans with crowd disturbances and letting off flares
Sevilla fans charged with crowd disturbances and throwing objects.

What about the flares in their end?

I was in that section, and I couldn't believe that there wasn't any segregation. Sevilla fans seemed pretty miffed that there were numerous Liverpool fans in "their" section. I even had one of the Sevilla older boy's having a go at me

[Yozza]

****ing hell just thinking about how we blew it still hurts so much

Sorry - it's late & I've had a few

**** it, roll on next season.....

[dom9]

What about the flares in their end?

I was in that section, and I couldn't believe that there wasn't any segregation. Sevilla fans seemed pretty miffed that there were numerous Liverpool fans in "their" section. I even had one of the Sevilla older boy's having a go at me

Well, yes. They have been charged too.

And as for segregation, well there's tens of thousands of scousers looking for any ticket they can get their hands on, and Seville didn't sell all of theirs.

So our guys in their end is pretty predictable.

[Jaymo]

Well, yes. They have been charged too.

And as for segregation, well there's tens of thousands of scousers looking for any ticket they can get their hands on, and Seville didn't sell all of theirs.

So our guys in their end is pretty predictable.

Exactly, so why wasn't there anything in place.

There weren't any stewards in the aisle and the police only jumped in after it kicked off.

Surely UEFA must have known that there was going to be a mix of fans in one end

They got charged with crowd trouble and throwing objects. We got charged with Crowd trouble and setting off fireworks.

[BigChief]

Watching that first half of the Copa Del Rey Sevilla are making Barca look ordinary. They really are a cup side through and through. Klopp did really well against them considering we've got Morono and a few other duds in our team. I feel even less down now.

[Yozza]

Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool need leadership after body blow by Sevilla

Defeat in the Europa League final was not down to a lack of experience from manager Klopp’s side but he needs cool-heads to take command on the field

A few days on and, having had time to reflect, Liverpool supporters may now be thinking that their midweek trip to Switzerland was not so heartbreaking after all. Losing to Sevilla was painful but getting to a European final is an achievement in itself, especially when it is a club’s first in nine years and the players and manager involved have been working together for just seven months.

That, ultimately, should be the positive which the thousands who travelled to Basel from Merseyside (and elsewhere) cling on to as they enter the post-season period – that what they witnessed on Wednesday night was the start rather than the end of a process. The team that lost the Europa League final was put together by one manager and led into battle by another, disconnect contributed to defeat, and what can begin now is long-term rebuilding.

That would have been the case even if Liverpool had held on to or increased the lead given to them by Daniel Sturridge’s 35th-minute strike at St Jakob Park, but the manner in which they collapsed in the second half – conceding three goals in 24 minutes and looking vulnerable to letting in more – only confirmed the sense that, for all his warm words and even warmer hugs, Jürgen Klopp is about to take an axe to the squad he inherited from Brendan Rodgers in October.

The German intimated as much when he spoke after defeat to Sevilla of his players losing “faith in our style of play”. Damning words from a man with a demanding doctrine and further proof that Liverpool’s biggest collective failure is in their heads rather than their feet.

It was in evidence throughout the recently completed campaign and highlighted up by the fact that Liverpool lost 19 points from winning positions in the Premier League, the third highest behind Tottenham Hotspur (20) and Chelsea (21). Norwich, West Bromwich Albion, Sunderland and Newcastle United were among the teams who pegged Liverpool back, with Southampton doing it twice, the second time recovering from 2-0 down to beat Klopp’s men 3-2 on a wild Sunday afternoon at St Mary’s.

In that regard, Liverpool’s capitulation against Sevilla was not that shocking, the key difference being that this time what they lost was not points but a first trophy in four years and, with it, qualification for the Champions League. Little wonder there were tears at the final whistle from those in red, in the stands and on the pitch.

There is a view, held by fans and observers alike, that Liverpool’s mental brittleness is a consequence of the youthful nature of the squad, that there are too many boys learning their trade, which inevitably leads to collective breakdowns. There is some truth in that – Liverpool do have a generally young group of players, a result of the transfer policy put in place by Fenway Sports Group (FSG) following their October 2010 takeover of the club. FSG put the emphasis on signing the best raw talent available, as opposed to chasing established players who come with expensive transfer fees and wage demands.

But to focus on that heavily would detract from the fact that among the 40-plus players acquired at a cost of more than £400m in the past six years, a fair few have been over the age of 25. Indeed in the team that started against Sevilla, there were only four players under 25 years old, with the entire XI full internationals at one time or another. It is not experience that Liverpool lack, but leaders.

Sporting leadership is a hard to define quality but you know when you see it and the simple fact is Liverpool do not have enough players with the necessary qualities to make sure the team is capable of seeing out a lead on a consistent basis, or when they lose that lead, not suffering a brain freeze that causes tactical and technical disorder, as was the case against Sevilla.

Leadership can come in the form of an older player who has been there and done that, and so it was noteworthy that Liverpool’s best player at St Jakob Park was Kolo Touré, a 35-year-old winner of Premier League titles with two different clubs. The Ivorian’s contract expires next month and on the back of his most recent display, allied to Mamadou Sakho’s potentially lengthy unavailability at centre-back, it would make sense for the club to keep him on for another season at least.

But if Touré does stay on he is unlikely to feature regularly for Liverpool next season and what is required are players who can fortify the resilience, as well as adherence to Klopp’s intensive style, of the first team on a consistent basis: cool-headed commanders in the heat of battle.

So the pursuit of Bayern Munich’s Mario Götze makes sense. The 23-year-old may not be an obvious leader but having won two Bundesliga titles under Klopp at Borussia Dortmund he not only knows what it takes to claim major honours but also how to do it with the current manager. Scoring a winning goal in a World Cup final is also a decent claim to fame.

More players will come in – Liverpool have already signed Serbian midfielder Marko Grujic and Cameroonian defender Joël Matip and are reportedly close to purchasing the Mainz goalkeeper Loris Karius –and many will depart, partly because of flaws in their ability but also because they simply do not have the mentality to succeed at a club of grand status and grand ambitions. Basel was a blow, but for Klopp and the Kop it can also be the beginning of a stronger, more successful future.

[Yozza]

Jürgen Klopp – serial loser? No, he can do a Dortmund at Liverpool

In the aftermath of defeat in the Europa League final – his fifth successive final loss – Liverpool’s manager suggested one day Basel 2016 would be seen as a significant staging post en route to the good times. He may be right

Jürgen Klopp: an apology. Like many other news sources, we might previously have given the impression Liverpool’s manager was a charming, successful, tactically coherent all-round hunk of competence. Headlines such as “Klopp’s Dortmund win Bundesliga title”, “Klopp leads so-so Liverpool to European final” and “Klopp: pretty much every other club jealous they didn’t hire him” might, in retrospect, have been misleading.

The Guardian is happy to correct its errors and in the interests of accuracy it will in the next few weeks be publishing a series of articles with headlines such as “Klopp – serial loser”, “When will Kloppo-Floppo finish the job?” and “Mad sad Jürg: my five-time final agony”.

Such is the way, of course, with football’s personality-driven churn. In his press conference after Liverpool’s Europa League final defeat by a superior Sevilla team, Klopp was asked about losing five successive finals with two different clubs. His response was familiarly lucid.

The story is not about me, Klopp said. Yes, it’s easier to say, here’s a manager who loses finals. That’s the problem. In reality there are so many variables involved that to suggest the result of a game such as this comes down to one aspect of one man’s personality, that it has anything to do with what happened at Wembley, say, three years ago between two different teams is a risible simplification. Just as it is to suggest victory is entirely a manager’s doing, or stasis, or mild improvement. This kind of reasoning is inherently limiting.

Yep. Good luck with that one, Jürgen. Or in other words, welcome to England where the corollary of continually overestimating the magical qualities of managers – father, teacher, spiritual guide – is that we are also honour-bound to rage against their projected failings. It was always a toss-up what part of Klopp English football would pick away at first. Some thought his excitability, a kind of Loony Kloppo schtick, just as Mad Out-Of-Date Louis, Mad Tight-Fisted Arsène, Mad Classy Manuel and Just Generally Mad José have all been safely dispatched this season.

Instead it looks as if losing finals is now set to become a Klopp thing, just as Pep Guardiola is now deemed a failure by some because the outline facts suggest he has a bizarrely specific hang-up over Champions League semi-finals.

The bad news for Klopp is his team lost in Basel in a way that seems to reinforce this sense of freezing in the moment. Liverpool stopped playing in the second half, spooked by Sevilla’s own champion surge. The players looked overawed, or overextended. They stopped following the plan, stopped passing quickly and running hard. Sevilla had 10 shots at goal in the second half and ran almost 3km more.

The most coherent argument for an innate, systemic flaw probably goes something like this. Klopp has a set pattern of playing. Not a complex one, or a system with any real built-in variation. On the other hand, in a one‑off game against good opponents, when everybody’s nervous, victory often comes from fine detail and adaptability. Finals are about finding a way to win. Klopp has only one way. His substitutions rarely change things, just refresh what’s there. Hence dead-ends, fixed gears, an inability to react.

Perhaps you could also suggest most finals happen at the end of the season, when Klopp’s hard-running players are more tired than the opposition. Or that his own relentlessness, an asset in the everyday grind, drains and distracts his players on these one-off occasions, prevents them from playing cold when the situation is already hot.

Still, the truth seems to lie elsewhere. Most obviously is in four of those five losing finals Klopp’s team have faced a demonstrably stronger opponent. Twice this was the all-conquering Bayern Munich of Jupp Heynckes, albeit the narrow loss in the Champions League final in 2013 came after Dortmund had thrashed Real Madrid in the semi-finals, itself clearly the work of a serial choker.

This year Liverpool lost at Wembley to Manchester City, Champions League semi-finalists, on penalties. Finally on Wednesday they met the three-times Europa champions, a more settled, grizzled, tactically grooved team in Unai Emery’s fourth season in charge.

Otherwise, Klopp’s Dortmund beat Bayern in the final of the DFL-Supercup in his first season but presumably that doesn’t count. Neither does the 5-2 shellacking of Bayern in the 2012 German Cup final, one of the few times Klopp has headed into one of these finals with a superior team at his disposal. Funnily enough, that same year Bayern also lost to Chelsea in the Champions League final. In Germany the Schweinsteiger set began to acquire a slight Klopp-style bottler tag, a Neverkusen sheen. Then they won the Champions League and the World Cup. So, maybe not that then.

It may be better simply to accept that modern football is like this, a hugely competitive, cash-stratified business of teams who hold the whip hand, who tend quite often to hoover up the trophies. Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United lost two Champions League finals in three years. Was he a serial loser too? Or did he just come up against the intractable Barcelona Supremacy? Klopp has to date managed ambitious secondary giants with an eye on the next level. He got there with Dortmund. He may do so with Liverpool. Either way the time to judge him is not on his past five unconnected one-off trophy games but on the next few years of graft and refinement, of finding a team that really does look like his own.

Certainly the current one is a temporary fix. Klopp took on a real camel of a squad last October, built by committee, bulging at the edges. Since when it has been a ragged season all round, all lost glasses, emergency appendectomies, emergency Steven Caulkers, drug bans, last-minute winners. Klopp hustled this team through to a final. There have been glimpses, exhilarating peaks, not least a thrilling 15-game ride in Europe powered by 11 different goalscorers.

Next comes the easier job of stripping out and paring back. This inherited team lacks the running power and muscular presence to suit Klopp’s preferred style. At times at St Jakob Park Liverpool were simply overpowered by a more imposing team. Emre Can didn’t have his best game but he is still raw and on an upward curve. Adam Lallana has found his inner scuffler. Central defence is being restocked. Hopefully Klopp will also indulge Daniel Sturridge a little. He may not hustle much but he is a genuinely high-class, inventive goalscorer.

In the aftermath of defeat Klopp suggested one day Basel 2016 would be seen as a significant staging post en route to the good times. One thing is certain. When he does get to lift a trophy again, it is unlikely to be because he’s learned, via some instructive bolt of lightning, how to win finals; more that these flickering gains have been nourished into a wider process of refinement and team-building, confirmation of a genuinely compelling character at work.