Liverpool’s decision to appoint Michael Edwards as the club’s sporting director in November 2016 will go down as a pivotal moment in the club’s recent history.
On the pitch Jurgen Klopp’s heavy metal brand of football has enabled Liverpool to climb to the summit of the game, with victory over Flamengo in the Club World Cup final seeing them crowned as champions of the world.
At this point, and with the end of a decade looming on the imminent horizon, a period of reflection is apt for one of the world’s most iconic football clubs.
Klopp will naturally sweep up the plaudits and rightly so, the scintillating individual and collective brilliance of Sadio Mane, Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino will be hailed, and the annals will pay tribute to a captain in Jordan Henderson who has silenced critics from both within and outside the club to lead his side to glory.
But it’s not only those figures in the public eye who deserve credit. Behind-the-scenes individuals are keeping the moving cogs ticking over and working to an elite standard.
Edwards is one of the more prominent figures commanding interest amongst the Liverpool supporters due to his stark connection with the club’s transfer activity. In just over three years in the job he’s made quite the difference.
Since stepping into the new role Liverpool have qualified for the Champions League in three successive seasons, won that same competition and look destined to clinch the Premier League title after nearly 30 years of misery and gut-wrenching failures.
The Reds’ success in the transfer market has been a driving factor in their perpetual rise to global domination, but there was a junction Edwards once reached that left fans in meltdown.
When Barcelona came calling for Philippe Coutinho in January 2018 Liverpool faced a complicated dilemma. The fee on the table – £142m – was gargantuan and naturally appealing for a business brain of Edwards’ ilk, but how damaging would the sale of the club’s star player be for the long-term mentality?
This, after all, was a club who had already sold Luis Suarez to Barcelona and Raheem Sterling to Manchester City.
But nearly two years on it’s fair to say that the decision to sell Coutinho was a stroke of genius and a defining one for Edwards’ legacy. Not only did it facilitate a change in Klopp’s system that has turned his midfield trio into one of the most suffocating, relentless and domineering engines in world football, it also provided the club with the funds to sign Alisson and Virgil van Dijk in two game-changing acquisitions.
Much harder than you’d think… Can you name Liverpool’s top scorers for each of these 25 seasons?
Doubters were well within their rights to question the decision to sell the Brazilian playmaker mid-season, but as time has unfolded it’s become abundantly clear that it marked a progressive watershed moment for the club; Edwards and the rest of Liverpool’s decision-makers made a genius call on Coutinho.
As the Merseyside giants head into a new decade as world champions, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that Coutinho’s sale – painful as it was – paved the path to glory.
Edwards’ Liverpool legacy is richer for it.
