“Everything is eternal until it ceases to exist” is a book written by Alexei Yurchak that addresses the contradictions of Soviet life in the last two decades of the Soviet Union. So it has nothing to do with Liverpool.
It has nothing to do with me. But the title has been on my mind a lot in recent weeks. Football clubs often change to some extent with players coming and going from season to season, and thanks to their constant evolution, the team has never gone from 1st to 11th.
At Liverpool, you can be sure that Jurgen Klopp will be around for the foreseeable future at least. An elite manager who puts his hand in the driver’s seat and leads the club through sometimes difficult situations.Or at least the Reds could hope that Klopp will remain calm until his high-profile announcement that he will leave at the end of the season is reversed.
It was all forever and now it’s gone. The uncertainty that currently exists in “Liverpool” affects the evaluation of all news related to the club. Stories that previously attracted little attention now take on a bit more weight in the post-Klopp era. For example, let’s look at the BBC’s football gossip page, which currently has two Reds-related articles.
The former (via Footmercato) claimed that bookmakers’ favorite Xabi Alonso has been approached to take Klopp’s place if he leaves. At the bottom of the page was an article from HITC that said “Liverpool eyeing Juventus and Italian striker Federico Chiesa, 26”.This is confusing and probably not new. A quick search reveals a link between the Reds and the Italian side dating back to at least 2021. If we believe this story to be true, Liverpool would have been chasing Chiesa for years.
Klopp was so confident he was going nowhere that it was easy for him to mentally assess the chances of transfer rumors turning into real deals. Liverpool don’t need a striker so why would they sign Chiesa? He could replace Mohamed Salah, but the Italian has barely played on the right since 2018/19, so it’s not a very clear conclusion. But now? It doesn’t exist forever.
Whoever is Liverpool’s next manager will inevitably have different ideas about how Klopp wants the team to play and which members of the current squad will suit his tactical vision. Salah is unlikely to be pushed out the door, but the new manager may feel that Chiesa is a better fit for him than the other front-line players.
