France eye World Cup glory as Morocco loom

It may only be a friendly, but for Liverpool’s players, the match against Olympique Lyonnais at Al-Nasr’s Maktoum Stadium on Sunday night is one more step on the road to rediscovering the consistency that had deserted them in the early half of the season.

Liverpool are in Dubai on a training camp, and Jurgen Klopp’s assistant Pep Lijnders wants the players to retain the intensity that made them the team “nobody wants to play again.

“You always search for consistency in the team. In the season you search for stability. The only way to be intense is that you can play every several days, not with the same 11, but with the core group,” he said, ahead of the first Dubai Super Cup outing against the French side. The second game, against A.C. Milan, will take place on Dec. 16.

“The injuries didn’t help, of course. Going behind in many games early — that didn’t help as well,” said Lijnders. “We all know that the team is built on confidence. And the player with confidence or without confidence, or team with confidence or without confidence, is not the same. The moments where we had to fight to come back into the game, and change the result around, that asks for a different type of game.

“We know other teams adapt. Teams know to sit deep against us, try to exploit our high line or the counter attack. And when it’s 1-0 for the opposition team, it makes it of course much easier to execute that type of game plan. We try to commit more bodies, players try to resolve more often something individually instead of collectively. And that’s a little bit of the story of the first part (of the season).

“Sometimes you need to take two steps back, to see the truth and feel how it is not to win as many games,” said Lijnders at a signing event for his book “Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC” at Dubai Mall. “And that’s why this break and being here in Dubai is really welcome because we can do some proper work, correct and create this team again who nobody wants to play against.”

Adding to the campaign’s disruption is the holding of the FIFA World Cup in mid-season for the first time ever. While six Liverpool players were with their national teams at Qatar 2022, the rest of the squad had a short break and is now back in full training.

“We want to adapt again to our game style. So the boys can get a lot of moments showing how we want to play. Counter-pressing is a massive part of that in the training sessions, but they have to adapt again to that style of play so we can stay high up the pitch, so we can attack and attack again. And we can have our creative players more often with the ball higher on the pitch.

“We want to create unity between the players, and between the staff and the players. It’s brilliant to be here in this environment, in this different part of the world. And we want to show in these two games that we have our hunger, our passion, our way of play. We’re really proud that we are here, that we are able as Liverpool to be here and to show who we are and what we can do.”

Since the start of the 2018-19 season, Liverpool’s consistency — with exception of the middle of the pandemic-dominated 2020-21 season — has been remarkable, as has been the team’s trophy haul.

So is it difficult to pick out one particular highlight?

“I was lying on the beach, and the waiter comes and he said ‘you gave me the worst day of my life when you beat us 4-0.’ And it was a Barca supporter,” said Lijnders, referencing Liverpool’s stunning second-leg comeback against the Spanish giants in the semifinal of the 2018-19 Champions League.

“And then I said (to Klopp), can you imagine if we didn’t play Barca how we played at home to reach the final of the Champions League, and then in the end we’re winning the Champions League and winning the Premier League, and the Super Cup and the World Cup.

“Can you imagine — we would not be lying here, that’s for sure, it would be different.”

It is a trick that Lijnders and Klopp are looking to repeat.

“You need success, you need to win,” he said. “You need to build confidence in the team and that’s something we need to do again, and not rely on what we did in the past.”