There’s nothing like a spectacular first goal to get supporters dreaming about what a new player might be able to achieve for their club.
Stan Collymore, Fernando Torres and Roberto Firmino all produced memorable efforts to get off the mark for Liverpool although as frontmen that maybe should not have been too much of a surprise.
When it comes to maiden Reds strikes though one of the very best of the modern era was despatched by a giant centre-half who may well have shocked himself, let alone the followers of his new club.
Sebastian Coates featured only intermittently during his two seasons at Anfield after joining Luis Suarez to become only the club’s second ever player from Uruguay and while Darwin Nunez currently only has nine Liverpool strikes under his belt so far, the £80m man will be delighted if he ever manages to match his compatriot’s gravity-defying effort which is firmly lodged into the annals of great LFC goals.
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Montevideo-born Coates joined his hometown club Nacional at the age of 11 and, after captaining his way through the age groups, broke into the first team at 18 helping the ‘Tricolores’ to the league title and the semi-finals of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s version of the Champions League, being voted the Uruguayan Championship‘s ‘Revelation of the Season’. Having already helped his country finish third in the South American Under-20 Championships, he made his senior international debut shortly before the 2011 Copa America in which he featured in four out of ‘La Celeste’s six matches en route to the trophy and won the ‘Trophy Claro’ awarded to the best young player of the tournament.
A second league title with Nacional had already followed that year and saw the 6 foot 6 20-year-old linked with a host of Europe’s top clubs including Paris St Germain, AC Milan and Atletico Madrid but he arrived at Anfield in a £7m deal at the end of the summer 2011 transfer window with the influence of Luis Suarez proving crucial. The Uruguayan forward had only joined the Reds the previous January himself as Liverpool began to emerge from the wreckage of Tom Hicks and George Gillett’s catastrophic ownership, with Kenny Dalglish having replaced Roy Hodgson as manager and capturing £22m Suarez along with £35m Andy Carroll to replace the departing Fernando Torres as the first signings of his second spell as Reds boss.
Having steadied the ship and been handed the manager’s job on a permanent by new owners FSG, the Scot was heavily backed in the transfer market and undertook a major squad restructuring with seven new signings - including young Sunderland midfielder Jordan Henderson as well as the likes of Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam, Jose Enrique, Craig Bellamy and goalkeeper Alexander Doni - coming in for around £56million and no fewer than 18 players moving on. Coates was the final addition and revealed after attending the Reds’ early season win over Sunderland the pivotal role Suarez - who had only managed four goals in his first five months at Anfield but already wowed the Kop with his rare talent and will to win - played in convincing him Anfield was the place to be.
"Luis told me a lot about Liverpool - but about the fans more than anything else”, Coates said. "I saw that myself on Saturday when the fans really got behind their side against Bolton and that was great to see. Luis also told me about the history and the tradition of the club and now I feel very happy and excited to be here because I have left one great club in Nacional and signed for another great club with a fantastic history. To come to such a big club alongside a fellow countryman is very important for me. I know Luis will help me settle in, we have the same cultures and customs so having him around will help me a lot."
The big Uruguayan was expected to provide cover for the Reds’ set of centre-halves with Jamie Carragher now in his 34th year and Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel both 27, assistant manager Steve Clarke explaining the new man would be given time to adapt to a new country and style of football.
"He's a talented youngster and gives us different options at the back”, Clarke said. "We look to sign young players that can improve and we looked at his performances throughout the Copa America when he was named Young Player of the Tournament. It's certainly exciting. It'll be a different challenge for him because the English Premier League takes a little bit of getting used to, so hopefully we can nurse him along, get him ready. He's ready to play. He's a full international and Uruguay are amongst the top five in the world, so they're a strong international team. You never really know how a foreign player coming into the English game is going to adapt. Some take a long time to adjust, while others like Luis Suarez come in and settle straight away. You just keep an eye on it and hope the boy settles quickly, gets to know his team-mates, gets a few chances to play and then you build on it from there."
Sure enough, after making his debut as a substitute for the injured Daniel Agger in a heavy September defeat at Tottenham, the Uruguayan’s first starts were limited until the new year to the League Cup although by November his performances in training and for the reserves were impressing Dalglish even if he wasn’t yet able to offer the Uruguayan regular game time in the first team.
"We are delighted with the way Seb is progressing”, the Scot said. "It is difficult to get him in the team at the moment because Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger are playing so well and Carra is back from injury. But Seb has done really well and he is getting better all the time. I think he has settled in really quickly and did really well at Stoke in the Carling Cup win so you are not going to get a sterner test and change in culture more than at Stoke with their style of play, which is unique to the Premier League. That was a great test for Seb because they played well that night and put us under a lot of pressure, but he came through that well and we are looking for him to have a long career here."
Coates made his full Premier League debut early in the new year and helped keep a clean sheet in a goalless Anfield draw with Stoke City but still had to bide his time, not making it off the bench in either of the two-legged League Cup semi-finals against Manchester City or the Wembley triumph over Cardiff City despite having played in the wins over Brighton, Stoke and Chelsea which had taken Liverpool into the last four. He made a second Premier League start in a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland in early March but later that month away at Queens Park Rangers came off the bench just after the half hour mark to replace the injured Martin Kelly and, nine minutes into the second half, came his moment of glory.
Having gone forward to join the attack with Liverpool having won a corner, the Uruguayan almost connected directly with captain Steven Gerrard’s flag kick but, under challenge from Anton Ferdinand, the ball flicked off the Reds defender to Stewart Downing who drove a left-footed cross-shot towards the far post. Bobby Zamora cleared the effort off the line but the ball looped up back towards Coates 18 yards out who showed remarkable athleticism for a man his size to arc his body and rocket an unstoppable scissor kick into the roof of the net past the helpless Paddy Kenny to send the travelling Liverpudlians behind the goal into wild, if slightly disbelieving, celebrations.
"That was a once-in-the-lifetime strike from a 6 foot 6 centre-back”, QPR manager Mark Hughes said afterwards of a strike which was rightly compared to the Welshman’s famous similarly acrobatic volley for his country against Spain back in 1985. “This should have been a night about an unlikely hero after defender Sebastian Coates opened his Anfield account with a stunning acrobatic volley”, the ECHO’s match report lamented but, despite Dirk Kuyt doubling the lead on 72 minutes, a shocking late collapse saw goals from Shaun Derry, former Reds striker Djibril Cisse and Jamie Mackie in the 90th minute hand the relegation-threatened hosts - third from bottom before the game - a vital three points and condemn Dalglish’s side to a third successive away defeat.
"I don't think anyone saw it coming”, the Reds manager said afterwards of his team’s late capitulation in a game which they had been largely dominant, winning ten corners in the opening twenty minutes and missing a host of chances. "The way we started the game was fantastic, the passing and the movement - the only thing missing was in front of goal. Then we started to create in the second half. We got a great goal from Seb, and another one from Dirk and to be fair we didn’t even see them getting a goal. We can’t explain it. I don't have any answers. We dominated the game. We were really creative, thoughtful and professional but they have walked away with three points. We never got what we deserved, but it is a tough life."
The late horror show in West London proved sadly symptomatic of Liverpool’s second half of the season which saw them win only five Premier League matches after the turn of the year and finish the campaign in eighth position. Despite Dalglish leading the club to its first silverware in six years and also reach the FA Cup final where they lost narrowly to soon-to-be-crowned European champions Chelsea, the Anfield icon was sacked soon after the end of the campaign and replaced by Northern Irishman Brendan Rodgers who the year before had led unfancied Swansea City into the Premier League for the first time in their history.
Despite his Loftus Road heroics, Coates made only two more starts - both in the Premier League - before Dalglish’s departure to tally a dozen appearances in his debut campaign at Anfield, a total he would match the following season under Rodgers as he proved unable to establish himself in the Liverpool team. A second - and far more prosaic - goal would follow when he headed in an equaliser in a topsy-turvy Europa League group stage 5-3 win at Young Boys Bern in Switzerland but a knee injury picked up on international duty in the summer of 2013 saw him sidelined for months and he returned to Nacional on loan in January 2014 in a bid to secure himself a place in the Uruguay squad for that summer’s World Cup in Brazil.
It proved successful and he did make a brief appearance at the finals, replacing Liverpool team-mate Luis Suarez in the closing minutes of their group stage over Roy Hodgson’s England. The pair were in the final weeks of their Anfield careers and, after Suarez joined Barcelona for £75m, Coates moved to Sunderland on a season-long loan later that summer before completing a permanent £2m to the Wearsiders the following July. Although his time on Merseyside had not worked out as all involved had hoped, the Uruguayan spoke fondly of his time with the Reds and the relationships he enjoyed with his fellow South Americans as well as local legends Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher.
"It wasn't just Luis”, Coates said. “There was also Maxi Rodriguez there and Lucas Leiva. We had a lot of South American players so for me it was perfect to settle down and to adapt, not just to the football but to the country. So it was good for me. It was like a dream for me too because we saw many games from the Premier League in Uruguay and many games from the Champions League with Stevie, with Carra. So it was amazing and when I arrived, it was like I had played 10 years with them, so for me it was perfect to be there with them and to learn how they play, how they live so for me it worked perfect."
After helping keep the Mackems in the Premier League under Dick Advocaat’s managership, Sam Allardyce sacrificed the Uruguayan in a bid to reduce the wage bill when he took over at the Stadium of Light and, after an 18-month loan spell at Sporting Lisbon, Coates joined the Portuguese club on a permanent deal in 2017 where he established himself as a defensive lynchpin and replaced Bruno Fernandes as captain after the midfielder’s transfer to Manchester United.
In May 2021, he skippered the ‘Verde e brancos’ (‘green and whites’) to their first league title in 19 years winning the award for the Premeira League’s best player after leading a defence which conceded only 20 goals in 34 league matches and kept 20 clean sheets. It capped an eventful spell in Portugal for the 31-year-old who in 2018 showed vital quick-thinking on the pitch to save the life of team-mate and goalkeeper Romain Salin who had swallowed his tongue after colliding with a goal-post.
Coates suffered a ‘Hall of Fame’ bad day at the office the following year when he conceded three penalties and was sent off in a home defeat to Rio Ave but had the resilience to bounce back, his status as Sporting’s defensive leader being re-asserted in the successful 2021 title run-in when, just days after the tragic suicide of his best friend and former Nacional team-mate, Santiago ‘Morro’ Garcia, he scored twice late on for Sporting to turn round a deficit against Santa Clara and keep their championship hopes alive, admitting afterwards, "I used to mark him during training sessions since we were kids, and we developed a very special relationship. We were almost soulmates. None of us will ever be able to get over his death."
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