The Champions League is the pinnacle of club football, but the Europa League is not that bad, right? You are still competing for a major title, you are still going up against some great competition in the later stages of the tournament. Of course, that is not how the tournament is viewed. Let’s be honest – for supporters of some of the world’s biggest teams, playing in the Europa League is an embarrassment. To the big boys of the sport, the Europa League is an afterthought. We don’t want to be associated with it. If there is a universe where our team is competing in Europe’s second tier, then that is one of the dark timelines.
Unfortunately for Liverpool fans this season, that timeline is our reality. No English team has won more Champions League titles in history and no team has reached more UCL finals than the Reds since 2018. Liverpool feels as out of place in the Europa League as Todd Boehly in the transfer market. We’re just going with the flow and hopefully, there is some cause to celebrate later on.
But that’s not how it felt against LASK, when Dominik Szoboszlai, Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah combined for a brilliant goal to seal a win in the Reds’ first Europa League game of the season. Szoboszlai ran past one opponent on the right-hand side before passing to Salah, who laid it back for him. Liverpool’s new Hungarian midfielder lost the ball for a second, but Nunez’s smart pressing led him to win it back and he then laid it off to Salah in the box. What followed is something we’ve seen the Egyptian King do a lot of times – brilliant close control followed by a calm finish that left the goalkeeper no chance.
It has been said, at least of the online football community, that fans love to debate and complain more than they actually enjoy the sport. It’s hard to argue against this statement as oftentimes, it seems that the modern fan has lost the ability to just sit back and enjoy when his team wins. There’s always some concern – an attacker missed an easy chance, the defence was too open, the youngster in the squad isn’t good enough to play, we can’t keep winning with these tactics, etc.
Salah himself didn’t even celebrate after his first Europa League goal for the club; perhaps for him, scoring against the LASK defence was not a true test of his skills. But Liverpool supporters across the world rejoiced. You see, sports is a suspension of disbelief, and in those few moments, nobody was thinking about being in the Europa League. They were just enjoying the football, as Klopp himself couldn’t stop smiling on the sidelines.