Lucas

[fidget]

Ok he was clearly one of the most gifted footballers of his generation, up there with Biscan and Smicer.

Who would you call an "average" lfc midfielder from the past decade?

You said "average as a footballer"
He's an internationally capped ex premier league player.
That puts him a bit above average wouldn't you say?

[dom9]

Ok he was clearly one of the most gifted footballers of his generation, up there with Biscan and Smicer.

Who would you call an "average" lfc midfielder from the past decade?

Poulsen and Jovanovic *spits*

[Charly]

I meant as a lfc midfielder.

Im not calling out as ****e.

Nothing wrong with being average in a team with Gerrard Alonso Mascheano and Hamman.

[dom9]

They were internationals too, y'know

[fidget]

If we leave him alone he might stop digging holes for himself

[kubrickscube]

Lucas was touted as a box to box midfielder at Gremio not an attacking one. For the record.

[Charly]

Poulsen and Jovanovic *spits*

You do know that average does not meen ****e?

Average means in the middle.

If Poulsen is average then who would you describe as being bottom of the curve?

[dom9]

You do know that average does not meen ****e?

Average means in the middle.

If Poulsen is average then who would you describe as being bottom of the curve?

You do know that I wasn't being entirely serious?

We've been pretty fortunate with midfielder over the years, but I guess that you'd expect that in one of the better teams.

Lucas wasn't average though. At the beginning he got a lot abuse. Expectations were high and unrealistic. Pre injury he was imperious. Post injury he was diminished but he gave us an option in the squad that nobody else offered.

He was not average.

[Buzzo]

Pre injury Lucas was on the verge of becoming a World Class (top drawer if you will) defensive midfielder. He was badly injured in a cup game against Chelsea (if I remember) and struggled to get back to those levels. But at that time he was finally getting the plaudits he deserved, and didn't he get player of the season one year? Saying all of that even towards the end of his career with us he still came in and performed well as a CB or a DM.

His career path at Liverpool showed him to represent everything the club wants from a player, he showed perseverance through adversity (getting shamefully jeered by his own) yet came through it all with a level of dignity and humour the rest of us could only dream of.

He is definitely an above average player and human being.

[RedReet]

Pre injury Lucas was on the verge of becoming a World Class (top drawer if you will) defensive midfielder. He was badly injured in a cup game against Chelsea (if I remember) and struggled to get back to those levels. But at that time he was finally getting the plaudits he deserved, and didn't he get player of the season one year? Saying all of that even towards the end of his career with us he still came in and performed well as a CB or a DM.

His career path at Liverpool showed him to represent everything the club wants from a player, he showed perseverance through adversity (getting shamefully jeered by his own) yet came through it all with a level of dignity and humour the rest of us could only dream of.

He is definitely an above average player and human being.

He was/is great.

Altough how sickened will he be if we win CL this year considering we were also CL finalists when he joined and never had a sniff again during his ten years? (And yes, I'm aware I'm setting up an open goal here for the likes of Charly)

[Charly]

No, I agree. I thought he would finally be the DM we needed during I think it was Dalglish's time. Then he got injured after showing his best ever form for us. It took him an age to get back up to speed, but then he got injured again, and never recovered.

He was potentially top class but was never able to sustain that form ( after finally making a position his own) because of those injuries.

But yeah.

I feel that if I dont at least get some abuse after one of my posts then I must have done something wrong.

[Buzzo]

No, I agree. I thought he would finally be the DM we needed during I think it was Dalglish's time. Then he got injured after showing his best ever form for us. It took him an age to get back up to speed, but then he got injured again, and never recovered.

He was potentially top class but was never able to sustain that form ( after finally making a position his own) because of those injuries.

But yeah.

I feel that if I dont at least get some abuse after one of my posts then I must have done something wrong.

[RedReet]

Probably of little interest to most on here, but...

Lucas Leiva hasn’t decided where he will watch the Liverpool-Inter Milan game yet. He might have Pepe Reina and Luis Alberto round to his house in the countryside outside Rome, or he might go round to theirs. Lazio’s mini-Liverpool contingent never watches alone. “We’re together a lot,” Lucas tells The Athletic. They’re still fans. Always will be. “Liverpool is a part of my life.”

After a decade at Anfield, how could it be any other way? Lucas may have left five years ago but Liverpool are as present as ever. There is no past tense. “I still follow them a lot and now I’m a very lucky supporter,” he smiles, “because we have won a lot of titles recently.” When Liverpool were last in Rome for the second leg of the 2018 Champions League semi-final, the veteran Brazilian wanted to pass through the turnstiles in the Curva Nord and stand with the away support. “I was thinking about going,” he says, “but for security reasons, people advised me not to go to the stadium.”

You can understand it. Walking out of the Olimpico as a Lazio player shortly after Roma suffered elimination in their biggest European game since the 1984 European Cup final wouldn’t have been too clever. “I went to the hotel, met Jurgen and some of the players,” Lucas recalls, “It was great to meet them and some of the staff. We had a chance to spend some time together.” The distance hasn’t made him a stranger. He still feels part of something. “As soon as you go into that family,” Lucas says, “if you then leave you still keep supporting because of the way people treat you at the club and the fans. It’s incredible.”


(Photo: Paul Gilham/Getty Images)
The 35-year-old remains in contact with Jordan Henderson and James Milner, the survivors from his time at the club. He had a chat with Klopp to congratulate him and the team after the Champions League victory in Madrid and recently heard from Steven Gerrard. “The last time we spoke was when Phil Coutinho signed with Villa. I just wanted to make sure he looks after Phil well,” Lucas says. “He’s a very good friend of mine and I’m just happy he’s playing again and showing the quality we all know he has.”

Leaving Liverpool after 10 years on Merseyside can’t have been easy. “It was a big change for me,” Lucas says. He was 30 and had only ever known one club in Europe. But as he weighed up a move to Lazio, sure enough, a Red put his mind at rest. “I spoke to Luis Alberto because I played with him at Liverpool. He was here and I could get a lot of information about the club, the team and the manager. It was very positive and that helped a bit my decision to come.”

Life in the Eternal City has gone well for more reasons than the carbonara and the chance to meet the Pope. “So, so many highlights,” Lucas enthuses. He believes some of the best football of his career has come in biancoceleste and was voted the club’s player of the season in his first two years in Italy. His debut could not have gone better, either— a 3-2 win over the hitherto all-conquering Juventus in the Super Cup.

“That was a great start,” Lucas reflects. “We won against the favourites. Juventus had won so many league titles and cups. We were the underdogs and managed to win the game. For that to be my first game was incredible. It was the best possible way to start a career at a club.”


Lucas celebrates the Super Cup win in 2017 (Photo: Matteo Ciambelli/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The midfield he joined had a claim to be the finest in the league. Lucas replaced another Lucas — it was Leiva for Biglia, the 2014 World Cup finalist. To his left is Luis Alberto, perhaps the most underrated creator in Europe’s top five leagues.

“He was very young (21) when he came to Liverpool like I was when I arrived,” Lucas explains. “Probably he didn’t have the luck I had in having a manager who could maybe have been a bit more patient with him.

“The quality was always there and he had to go (on loan) to Spain (at Malaga and Deportivo La Coruna) to get more experience. Then he moved to Lazio and his first year wasn’t easy. But afterwards, he just found himself. He could show his qualities and has been one of the best players in the league the last few years. His quality in the final third is incredible.”


A rare Premier League outing for Luis Alberto against Crystal Palace in 2013 (Photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
To Lucas’ right is Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, the Serb dubbed the “Zlatan Ibrahimovic of midfielders”. Lazio’s owner Claudio Lotito once held out for €100 million for Milinkovic-Savic in the belief that if Paul Pogba was worth that figure, then why not his own player? “To be honest when I first came I didn’t really know him,” Lucas admits, “but he has everything a top player needs to have. He’s physically very strong. In the air he’s unmarkable. But with the ball, he’s fantastic as well. He can assist and score goals. He has a very good shot and he’s a player who is improving every year. He has all the qualities to play at the highest level. For sure, he is one of the best players I’ve played with.”

Naturally, it helps to have a player as prolific as Ciro Immobile up front, too. A Golden Shoe winner and holder of the single-season scoring record, Immobile could yet become only the second player to top the scoring charts in Serie A four times. It makes the lack of respect for his achievements perplexing. After watching the blond, whippet-like striker from Torre Annunziata show up and win so many big games for his team — Immobile’s record in the Champions League is nine goals in 15 appearances — Lucas can’t get his head around it.

“I don’t remember a season that he scored fewer than 30 goals,” Lucas says. “It’s not only one season. He has been scoring a lot of goals for many seasons. For sure he’s on that list from 1 to 10 of the best strikers in the world or top five because every year he scores. Now he has 25 in all competitions this season. Maybe people don’t speak much about him, but here in Italy he’s probably considered the best striker in the league. Ciro is a natural finisher. That’s how I describe him. It’s very rare he misses the target, very rare for the keeper to make a save. His numbers speak for themselves and how good he is. He’s our captain and a very important player for the club.”


Immobile is having another high-scoring season (Photo: Marco Rosi – SS Lazio/Getty Images)
One Super Cup followed another, Lazio lifted the Coppa Italia, qualified for the Champions League after 13 long years and reached the last 16 for the first time since 2000. “I won three titles,” Lucas says. His only regret? The spring of 2020 when the pandemic stopped play and halted Lazio’s unexpected title charge. COVID-19 was a reminder to football that it is the most important of the very least important things. As cases mounted and the death toll rose, perspectives sharpened and kicking a ball around paled in significance. For Lazio fans, the timing of it left them with a great “what if?” The team was undefeated in 21 league games and Lazio were top of the table when Serie A was suspended. The momentum was with them and they were daring to dream of a first scudetto since 2000.

“We had the feeling that if the league had continued we would have won that year,” Lucas says. “We had a two-month break and in the end, we couldn’t win.” All of a sudden, Lazio had to play two or three games a week and the squad wasn’t deep enough to cope. “That was probably the high point of my career (at Lazio),” he adds. “I could feel the fans, the club… they were so excited. Lazio had not challenged for the league in many years. I was lucky to spend those four years under Simone Inzaghi in, let’s say, our golden era.”

The mention of Inzaghi brings us full circle. Inter headhunted him to succeed Antonio Conte last summer and he will be in the away dugout at Anfield on Tuesday night, running his fingers through his raven black hair, wondering how his team are going to overturn a 2-0 first-leg defeat. “He’s still young (45), but was even younger when I arrived at Lazio,” Lucas says.

Inzaghi had acted as a caretaker after Stefano Pioli got the sack following a brutal 4-1 loss to Roma in the Derby della Capitale in April 2016. He was then supposed to step aside and take charge of Salernitana, the second division side Lazio’s president Claudio Lotito co-owned at the time. Marcelo Bielsa was announced as Lazio’s new coach but quit two days later without ever boarding a plane from Buenos Aires. His decision was a blessing in disguise as Inzaghi got the permanent job instead and is now remembered as one of the best managers in the club’s history, together with Tommaso Maestrelli and Sven-Goran Eriksson.

“He did very well with the under-23s,” Lucas says. “He won a few titles. I didn’t know much about him. It was only his second season as a first-team coach. It was a very positive surprise when I started working with him. He’s a great manager. For me, he was really important. I think he’s the coach I played the most games for. The last four years I played with him are probably one of the best times in my career because he gave me a lot of confidence, we were successful together and we won.”

On Friday, Inzaghi’s Inter returned to the top of the table with a 5-0 win over Salernitana. Lautaro Martinez scored a hat-trick, finally ending a seven-hour goal drought, while his strike partner, Edin Dzeko, also bagged a brace. “He’s an offensive manager,” Lucas explains. “A very offensive manager. But like all Italians, he is very worried about tactics and how not to concede goals. It’s a good mix. Simone’s very young so he tends to attack a lot. His teams are always scoring a lot of goals but he has in his blood Italian defensive tactics. That’s why I think he has been successful and he’s progressing very well in his career.”


Inzaghi’s Inter are facing an uphill battle against Liverpool (Photo: Tullio Puglia – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
The bravery of Inter’s approach in the first leg — which manifested itself in their willingness to play through the Liverpool press and have a real go at the visitors at the beginning of the second half — didn’t come as a surprise to Lucas. “Inter have a fantastic squad,” he says, “Liverpool played a good game (at San Siro). Not the perfect game but they knew the moments when they had to suffer and not concede a goal. At the end of the game, the intensity of the Premier League made the difference. Liverpool won a very important game. Now they have a big advantage of playing at Anfield and for Inter it will be even harder because I know how hard it is to play on European nights at Anfield.”

Lucas can’t find the words to articulate how the atmosphere generated by the home support lifts Liverpool’s performances. It’s intangible. “A unique feeling,” he says. “Just being there and having that experience, you can feel it. When you speak about Anfield and the Champions League the motivation the players already have is 10 per cent more because we know how beautiful it is. In the last few years, Anfield again made the difference. We can remember the comeback against Barcelona that probably wouldn’t be possible in other stadiums but in Anfield anything is possible.” Lucas has fond memories of the Dortmund game in 2016 when Liverpool came back from 2-0 then 3-1 down to win 4-3 in the last minute. “That game was incredible,” he says. “Probably in many other stadiums, that game would have been over.”


(Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Neutrals hope Tuesday night’s second leg will be every bit as exhilarating to watch. Inter have nothing to lose, but Liverpool haven’t lost at Anfield in just over a year — and this isn’t the group stages when Atalanta became the last away team to win here in the Champions League back in November 2020. “Liverpool are stronger and a favourite,” Lucas says.

Five years after his move to Lazio, his admiration of Klopp is undiminished. “First of all, he’s a fantastic human being — a great man, very honest,” Lucas nods. “I learned a lot in the two years I spent with him. I took a lot of the advice he gave me. As soon as he arrived at the club, we could feel, we could smell, things were changing and that the great moments of Liverpool would be back.”

What Lucas appreciated about Klopp was how he handled the end of his time on Merseyside. He was straight up with Lucas who always knew where he stood. The sincerity of Klopp’s approach earned his respect. “When Jurgen arrived at the club, as I said, we felt things were changing. For myself, I felt the same. Probably my time at the club was coming to an end. I was playing a little less so sometimes I was frustrated. I remember speaking with him one day and he said: ‘Lucas, sometimes I cannot say what you want to hear, you know’. That’s the sentence I remember because sometimes it is hard to listen to something that you don’t want but it’s better because then it makes you improve and think about it. So that’s something I carry with me to this day and like I say it was great to work with him. Our relationship is still very good and that’s what matters in the end.”


(Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/West Bromwich Albion FC via Getty Images)
Lucas wasn’t able to watch Liverpool’s 1-0 win over West Ham on Saturday. Lazio were busy in Sardinia putting in one of their best displays of the season. Immobile made it 20 goals for the season and Luis Alberto got on the scoresheet too. The 3-0 win over Cagliari was their fourth by that score in their last eight games. It was also the 100th of Lucas’ career in biancoceleste, and the team are still just about in contention for a Champions League place under Maurizio Sarri. No longer in Europe and out of the Coppa Italia to boot, Lazio are now able to focus on the league and fine-tuning some of the tenets of Sarrismo, which is just as well as their record when playing one game a week is eight wins in 11.

As for Liverpool, Lucas hopes they progress on Tuesday and still believes Klopp can deliver the Premier League in May. “Nobody expected that Liverpool would be in this position by March,” he says. “City were ahead by miles. But it shows the mentality of Liverpool and how difficult the Premier League is. Now the league is open, completely open and I have the feeling that if Liverpool gets in front, they will not drop any more points.”

Whatever happens, Lucas will be watching.

(Top photos: Getty Images/Design: Sam Richardson)

[Paul12]

Probably of little interest to most on here, but...

Because we are so young? Unsentimental? Were never fans of the unluckee player?

[danperkins]

Not sure where I'll watch the Inter game myself, see what happens.