“I am the wrong person to ask about [it] because I don’t like this kind of football,” said Jurgen Klopp. It wasn’t his style: low block, three at the back, which became five, barely a third of possession with a team who, the Liverpool manager was keen to point out, had world-class players. He claimed he respected Tottenham but his comments felt damning. “I cannot coach it,” Klopp concluded.
Antonio Conte could. “He makes it very, very, very easy for you on the pitch,” said Ben Davies who snuffed out Mohamed Salah on the Egyptian’s 250th Liverpool game. Tottenham’s draw at Anfield altered the equation in the title race and the top-four battle alike. Above all, however, it felt a triumph of Conte’s puritanism. Just when it seemed as though Liverpool might compile the greatest season of any English club, and among the best of any club, along came Conte, a world-class manager with an odd hybrid of superstar and more prosaic players. “Our gameplan was perfect,” reflected Heung-Min Son, his scorer.
