Liverpool had needed to reinvent themselves, Jurgen Klopp said, and they did. As winners, albeit just about. Klopp had greater things on his mind in the bowels of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona than the precise choice of words in his second language, but if the definition of reinvention brought debate then the Liverpool manager’s version was less revolutionary than retro.
It was more old Liverpool than new Liverpool, more the Liverpool of the last few years than a glimpse of a very different era. All of which felt logical, given the difficulty of reinventing a side in six days with the same squad. But if Ajax were beaten by a late Joel Matip header – “nobody was surprised it was a set-piece,” said Klopp after a typical Liverpool goal – they also lost to a team with a more familiar feel. If Liverpool did not play football, as Klopp sees it, last week, they did once again.
