“Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC” by Pep Lijnders
In 2021-2022 season, Liverpool FC played all available 63 matches across 4 tournaments: the Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup, and the Carabao Cup, where they reached all 3 finals as well as just 1 point short of winning the Premier League at the very last match of the season.
Although they eventually “only” won the FA cup and the Carabao Cup, it was the first time in history that an English club have a shot at a potential quadruple (winning all 4 trophies) and they do so by breaking numerous records along the way. So how did they do it?
This is the behind the scene story of that incredible season, a sporting diary written by Jürgen Klopp’s assistant manager, Pep Lijnders, broken down into 44 chapters that represent 38 match weeks for a season + 6 more off match weeks in between.
It is filled with many insights on what they did right, what tactics didn’t work out, all the closed-door chaos, the players’ development, the club culture, the role of the backroom staffs that make things happen, down to the small things such as the many different WhatsApp groups or the fans’ love story with Dua Lipa’s song “one kiss” that became that season’s unofficial anthem.
The book, however, is written with the assumption of the readers’ prior knowledge about the club and its players, so it could be a tad bit confusing at first for those who aren’t familiar with the names. But this is a minor inconvenience that could easily be overcome once we start getting into the flow of the book.
And for the rest of the fans, the book feels like a codified version of the nostalgia that we all remember from that season, but crucially with an added perspective from the inside. It reveals the club’s day-to-day operations and what the people inside the management were thinking during that season, which shows a lot about the overall atmosphere, the dynamism within the club, the synergy between owner-director-manager, the players’ relationship, all the way to Jürgen’s special relationship with the fans (and his fist-pumps).
Nevertheless, the book paints such a complete picture on how Liverpool operates that it started to get me thinking, was this the reason why in the proceeding 2022-23 season Liverpool played so miserably? Not because of the burnout from last season, not necessarily because of the unfortunate injuries, but can it be exactly because of this book that reveals everything? I mean, all opposition managers can just read this book and discover Liverpool’s trade secret, their special sauce, and construct a plan to curb its intensity.
They don’t even need to send a spy to the training ground because the book lay down all the strategy and tactics: it shows how they prepare for every upcoming match, the research approach on the oppositions, the detailed game plan complete with the tactical reasoning behind them, and the many different types of drills and trainings to perfect their game plan, in horrific details! Hence, suffice to say that reading this book has been a mix of “oh wow” and “oh my Fowler, don’t reveal that!”
But at the end of the day it is a book that brings out fond memories, that captures the very essence of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool era, complete with great sayings applicable for both football and life in general, which are mostly said by Pep but some by Jürgen and others. Here are some of my favourites:
- There is a saying that the way you speak to your players become their inner voice.
- Dominate midfield and you will dominate the game.
- Talents need models, not criticism.
- We attacks with triangles, but we defend with triangles as well.
- If you try to chase the players, they will always run away from you. But if you have what the players want, they will come to you.
- When you don’t smile, the game doesn’t smile.
- That you lose on the scoreboard, it can always happen, but you don’t lose yourself.
- Our players need to react quickly to defence and create confusion when losing the ball. If you want to explain Jürgen’s football ideas in one sentence, this is probably it.
- Give them pressure everywhere and from everywhere, high and in the highest intensity, and give them pressure in an unpredictable way.
- This is what training is all about: You have a problem, you create a solution, start training and see it isn’t working but insist and keep repeating and correcting behaviours until everyone gets the point.
- A player doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- A good team solves problems, a top team avoids them.
- You don’t prepare for finals in the week leading up to them – it’s a long, long journey.
- The brain beats the muscle, but the heart beats the brain.
- We will repeat until we vomit.
- The world is not full of winners, the world is full of triers.
- What I learned about life is if you stay on track, when you keep going, you get the reward.
- Without clarity there is no consistency.
- Bring together a German who admires Sacchi and a Dutchman who admires Cruyff and you create a monster!
THE CHAOS THEORY 