As I watch Coutinho’s tiny feet dance bachata through the City backline, my heart hums a gentle tune of goodwill in an effort to subdue its own profuse beating.
Though it may be hard to believe, Liverpool are on the brink of a footballing Renaissance.
Roberto Firmino plays the role of a dogged Dante Aligheri, who’s own work has never been truly appreciated outside of his own city. In the future, his own “Inferno” may soon come, but until then, he meanders around the forward area with tact and grace. Perfectly placed through passes cause a cascading pulse among the supporters, while they do their best to hold their composure.
Daniel Sturridge, as it were for Machiavelli, would achieve so much more if he could simply get out of his own way. The belaboured front-man inches closer and closer to irrelevance with each feeble deconstruction of a bone or a ligament in his body.
Ever the painter and sculptor, Adam Lallana affirms himself as Michelangelo every week. His canvas is a pitch, his brush – a set of two boots, the perpetually pirouetting playmaker spins himself into and out of traffic as frequently as the Sun rises and sets.
Our DaVinci, another little magician, is none other than Philippe Coutinho. He scans the horizon and seeks the most awe-inspiring moments to bring joy and goodness to Liverpool Football Club in the best way he knows how: via utterly insane ability.
All of that being said, it leaves one role for the new boss, Jurgen Klopp. Although unlike his compatriot in Firenze monetarily, the influence as sole proprietor for a budding movement in an otherwise magnificent city leaves him to be only one man: Lorenzo de Medici.
A facilitator, for lack of a better term, Klopp puts players in positions where they are bound to succeed. Take Emre Can, for instance, who toiled about as a failing artist in Brendan Rodgers’ intriguing attempt to make him an out and out defender. Since the arrival of the German footballing equivalent of Plato, he has been moved to a more natural position, and performed much better accordingly.
You see, the Renaissance, although a rebirth, wasn’t necessarily about a place coming alive after being dead for so long. It was more about reallocating resources which already existed, in the best interest of the community as a whole. Just as DaVinci would have been no good as a banker, Lallana would be useless in defence.
