Mauricio Pochettino sank to his haunches, and with head in his hands the Chelsea boss began to feel a familiar sensation.
Pochettino will have been forgiven for his acute sense of deja vu as once more he lost to Jurgen Klopp in a major cup final, but if the Argentinian won plenty of admiration the last time he was a beaten finalist against the Liverpool boss – when his Tottenham Hotspur side were on the end of a 2-0 loss in the 2019 Champions League showpiece – there was little honour in defeat this time around.
One of the most expensively assembled sides in British football history had 120 minutes to beat a Liverpool squad shorn of 11 first-team players and they were unable to turn the screw before Virgil van Dijk headed in the winner.
The “billion-pound bottlejobs” was the label placed on the Londoners by Gary Neville on Sky Sports as a Liverpool team besieged by injuries, 13 now in total – and one that fielded no fewer than seven academy graduates on the day – beat them with one of the last touches of the game at Wembley.
That Klopp’s colts were able to summon the sort of character needed to keep pace on such a stage against a club like Chelsea speaks to the culture that has been fostered around the AXA Centre under Klopp and Pep Lijnders. It also says tons about the hideously unbalanced nature of the setup at the Todd Boehly-led Chelsea, but that is another topic entirely.
“The dream was to prove [to the] world that it’s possible [to win], even on this level in the Premier League,” Lijnders said on Friday. “And not just to prove that you can bring young players, but win, to bring young players and win.
“The Academy is created to win, to bring players that can win you games, that can win you trophies, because Liverpool Football Club is about this. I’m really proud. I always believed in it, and how I said now a few times, we really created a culture, this one-club mentality that from a young age we play in a certain way.”
At times, such soundbites can sound like the overly-sentimental ramblings of an idealist, out of place in an industry as cut-throat as football. But days like Sunday prove that Klopp and his staff’s dedication, faith and bravery towards thrusting young talents to the forefront can be vindicated.
Such is Liverpool’s business model, imposed on them by owners Fenway Sports Group, that they are forced, at times, to dip into their youth ranks more than their well-heeled rivals might be whenever back-ups, deputies and stop-gaps are needed.
That should not seek to do the youngsters who shone at Wembley a disservice but a tweet from Reds legend Jamie Carragher accurately summed up the situation Liverpool found themselves in. He posted: “A club who have spent a billion pounds in under two years lost against a team that had 3 kids (Danns, McConnell, Clark) in it at the end who most people watching would never have seen play before.”
“Obviously age is not at all in our thought process in that moment,” Klopp said in his post-match press conference. “We knew who we [would] take, we knew that we have to build a squad. It was clear that yesterday in training, it was so clear that these are the boys we will take.
“We needed fresh legs. We needed [that]. It was clear. You can always think [about] who you take off. In the end it’s always the wrong one because do we take off Cody Gakpo or do we take off Lucho (Luis Diaz)? Do we take off Harvey or do we take off Macca (Alexis Mac Allister)? Do we take off Wataru Endo or Macca?
