Liverpool Again Asking Supporters to Show More Passion Than They Have
During the Jürgen Klopp era, Anfield was a fortress. Always one of the most difficult places for an opponent to play, Liverpool’s German boss proved a savant at orchestrating the supporters, setting up a side that fed the fans with high-tempo football and an aggressive press and then in turn fed off the energy they returned in a virtuous cycle that helped the club to reestablish itself as one of Europe’s dominant powers.
This season, head coach Arne Slot’s second year in charge, has seen a near total unravelling of that. The more restrained Dutchman seems either hesitant to play to the crowd or simply unable, and as the team has shifted to his more controlled and less aggressive approach it’s felt at times as though the passion has slowly bled out of Anfield. It is, quite clearly, no longer a fortress, even if there’s a desire to still make nods to that.
“Next week is the decider,” captain Virgil van Dijk said after Tuesday night’s disappointing first leg 1-0 defeat away to Galatasaray in the Round of 16 of the Champions League. “The matter of fact is that we’re at home, and there’s only going to be our fans there, so hopefully it’s going to be an amazing positive evening for us. But we have to fight; we have to show we deserve it. We have to earn a place in the next round.”
With Galatasaray having seen their fans banned from travelling, it does mean Anfield will be entirely filled with Liverpool supporters. The problem is that, outside of press conferences, the team—from the head coach through to the players—haven’t given those supporters a while lot to work with for more than a year now, with autumn 2024 the last time Liverpool played consistently high-quality and attacking football.
Support in football never exists in a vacuum, and certainly it hasn’t ever at Anfield. At its best, and going back long before Klopp even if he channeled better than anyone before him in the Premier League era, it’s always been give and take. Sometimes it’s the fans who rumble to life first, other times a player puts in a physical performance to stir them. Either way, from that starting point the two feed off each other and grow.
Coming out in the press a week ahead asking the fans to get fired up and try to carry the team for 90 minutes while the players are asked by the manager to play metronomic low-event football to limit opposition chances—while dialling down the press and slowing Liverpool’s own attack—is simply never going to work, and asking for that from supporters as Slot and the players often have this season is, at best, a little naive.
Last season, Anfield would still roar to life. Through a terrible autumn this season they could still at times reach their full, rabid voice. But when the players don’t do their part—when the players in fact seem set up by the coach to actively work against doing their part—that can only last for so long, and in 2026 there has been scant ferocity in the stands. And it is, not to put too fine a point on it, extremely fucking obvious why.
If Anfield does get loud against Galatasaray next week, it will be because the players come out fighting and show the fans they’re willing and able to do their part. Hopefully that’s what we get. Hopefully, too, if we do get it we’ll see some signs of understanding in the weeks ahead that when it comes to support, if the players don’t show passion on the pitch there’s only so long the fans in the stands can keep doing their part.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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