Liverpool fans celebrate winning the Premier League with flares outside Anfield.
Photo: phil noble/ReutersLiverpool’s procession to the Premier League title was supposed to be over in March. The club, just two wins away from finishing the job, was set to become the earliest champion in league history. Hotel room prices in Liverpool had soared for prospective clinch dates. The city was exploring parade routes.
Then, you know what. A global pandemic managed what 19 other Premier League teams had failed to do and put the brakes on a runaway Liverpool side. The club had been waiting 30 years to claim another championship. How much more time the coronavirus would tack on was anyone’s guess.
Liverpool’s moment finally came on Thursday night. Its players didn’t even have to kick a ball. Manchester City’s 2-1 loss to Chelsea means it is now impossible for City to close the 23-point gap in its seven remaining matches. And so, for the first time since 1990, one of the most storied soccer teams in the world is an English champion.
When and where the club’s supporters will get to celebrate that title remains to be seen. Soccer matches in the U.K. are being played behind closed doors for the foreseeable future and championship parades now seem like a crazy idea from a different era. Even English pubs are still closed until early July.
For now, Liverpool is simply grateful that it got over the finish at all. When the Premier League put its season on ice in mid-March, executives couldn’t predict what the rest of the season would look like. There was no doubt Liverpool deserved the title—the club was 25 points clear of Manchester City at the time—but every scenario seemed to be on the table. Would the league cancel the rest of the season and simply hand Liverpool the trophy? Or would they go for a British wait-and-see?
Manager Jürgen Klopp didn’t think much about it in the early days of the pandemic. There were more important things to worry about, he insisted. But as negotiations between clubs progressed, he soon became terrified of the idea that the season could be erased altogether. Momentum was growing around the phrase “null and void.”
“I became worried in the moment when people started talking about ‘null and void’ this season because I was like ‘Wow,’” Klopp said this month. “I really felt it physically. That would have been really, really hard.”
Liverpool had come agonizingly close in recent years. In 2014, the club fell apart over two games and lost the title by two points. The lasting image of the collapse remains captain Steven Gerrard’s slip at Anfield to allow a season-shaking goal. Yet somehow, Liverpool’s 2018-19 campaign was even harder to swallow. Despite posting the third-highest points total in Premier League history, it still couldn’t leapfrog an irresistible Manchester City. The wait for a league title went on.
Which isn’t to say there weren’t other highlights in those 30 years. Liverpool lifted the FA Cup three times in that span and the Champions League trophy twice, including spring 2019. But the real turning points in the reconstruction of the club came in 2010, when it was acquired by the U.S.-based Fenway Sports Group—which also owns the Boston Red Sox—and in 2015, when it hired Klopp to coach it.
Klopp’s infectious enthusiasm and unbridled passion on the sideline became Liverpool’s new signature. So it was all the more jarring to see the title won on Thursday in such an anticlimax. Fans had pictured this moment coming with Klopp fist-pumping his way across the Anfield pitch, not sitting at home on Zoom.
But it was hardly the first historic title to be won remotely. Four years ago, Leicester City claimed its Cinderella championship by watching Chelsea hold second-place Tottenham to a draw from striker Jamie Vardy’s house party. And in 2018, Manchester City’s players were officially crowned champions on a day off as Manchester United dropped crucial points. The team did the most convenient thing and gathered in a Cheshire pub to throw back a few pints with unsuspecting fans.
For Liverpool, those options were ruled out by social distancing. The closest they came to an on-field celebration was 24 hours earlier, when it put in a flawless performance to beat Crystal Palace 4-0. There were seven more matches on their 38-game schedule, but the players were well aware at the final whistle that they might have already done enough.
“You shouldn’t underestimate how much this team wants it,” Klopp said. “This team really wants it; they want to fulfill the wishes of the people at home.”
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com
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