Those Magic Europa-ean Nights?

By the time you read this, Liverpool FC will have boarded a flight to Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. This is where LASK, which currently sit at third place in the Austrian Bundesliga, will host the Reds for the opening match of the Europa League group stage at their Raiffessen Arena (capacity: just under 20,000, or a little bit less than the Main Stand at Anfield).

The Europa League. Remember when we used to laugh and make fun of “lesser” Premier League clubs and their big trips to Poland or Cyprus for cup competition football on Thursday nights – which for us at home is a Thursday lunchtime kickoff, and an early one at that? Oh, how we laughed.

And here we are. Now it’s us in the Europa League, where we will watch what appear to be – after dropping only two points through six matches and extending the league’s longest unbeaten run to 16 games – legitimate Premier League title contenders line up against “lesser” (beware, beware the use of that word and the entitlement that oozes from both syllables) sides.

Nobody wanted to be here. And where is here? Well: After LASK, the Reds’s other Europa League group stage opponents are Toulouse, currently 13th place in France’s Ligue 1; and Union Saint-Gilloise, who stand at ninth in the Belgian domestic league.

Real Madrid these are not. West Ham may create more trouble on Sunday. At least the flights are short, but come on. What’s the fun and frisson in this, the League Cup of “European” cups?

Should we even bother?

Really, there are just two ways to look at this. One is the cynic’s view, as the first in a string of indignities in what will amount to a season-long humiliation that began with the fifth-place last May, when the Reds missed Champions League qualification for the first time in Trent Alexander-Arnold’s career as a first-team regular. Mohamed Salah, holder of the fastest hat-trick in Champions League history, has never not played in the Champions League as a Red and has played in three finals. That song is our song. We still need to beat Madrid, to give them what they need to hear. Galois – what the hell is all this shit?

Or we can view it as exactly what it is: a European tournament. Meaning, European football under the lights at Anfield. Meaning, a European cup competition that Liverpool can absolutely win – and win in what would be an atmosphere for the absolute ages at a final in Dublin, just across the Irish Sea from Merseyside.  

Mo apologized to we the fans because he is a competitor. He hates losing and he hates being subbed off. I can guarantee you he does not want to compete in the Europa League – he wants to win the goddamn thing. He wants to bring another trophy home and he wants there to be at least another in the double-decker bus as it passed by the Three Graces.

And so should you.

It’s been said before but it bears repeating: we have been spoiled rotten over the past under Jürgen Norbert Klopp (and the crew that hired him, but that’s for another argument). For those of you just joining us, strolling into the Champions League every year as if it were a Costa Coffee and not a major achievement in itself is not normal. Making three finals in five seasons is not normal.

Just ask the sickos among us with Daniel Agger jerseys in their closets. Before the local kid announced his arrival with That Free Kick against Hoffenheim, way back in 2017, Liverpool had spent most of ten years wandering in the wilderness. It was a remarkable turnaround against Borussia Dortmund in the Europa League the year before, in Klopp’s first season, that was the first real hint that the heavy-metal, mentality-monster era was coming.  

Do you recall 2016-2017, when we and everyone else involved with eighth-place Liverpool stayed at home, when there were no European nights at all? (That was also the year first-place Leicester, currently plying their trade in the Championship, finished 15 points ahead of Manchester City, in case you need a reminder how fast fortune fades.)

Through five league games, a return to the killer form that made 21st-century Liverpool comparable to the continental conquerors of a generation ago really does seem possible, if not already in progress. We may rue dropping points at Chelsea, but that was the first day out. And we can do that only because of everything that’s happened since.

That was before we made two more midfield signings and discovered we had a new great No. 8. That was before Liverpool won two games in a row down ten men, before our No. 9 announced himself in a fashion that absolutely gives Newcastle nightmares, before our third captain scored the gamewinner in what had been a house of horrors for the squad that did not qualify for the CL.

Because the team that showed up to Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest and to Wolves to put on those kinds of performances has no place pretending to be European royalty.

This is no longer that team, but it is paying for those sins. That’s how this works.

All that to say: yes, this current Liverpool team is probably better than the Newcastle and the United that get to play the bigger games. Were the question to be put to a poll, most citizens of the earth would rather watch us instead of the Oilbirds or Alex tenth Place’s selection line up against Bayern or Milan. It would be sweet relief to see the Reds finally win a game at Diego Maradona Stadium in Napoli – and would there be anything sweeter than leaving the Bernabeu as victors?

Those days may yet come. Parts constantly need replacing, but the “Liverpool 2.0” that Klopp committed to building is humming. He is here until 2026. He is World Cup-winner Alexis Mac Allister’s dad. There is no Champions League football for Saudi Arabian clubs. Do not for a second think Mo Salah doesn’t know that.

All this will end eventually. But for now, we will still have our European nights. Whether they are Thursdays or (as it will be on Oct. 26, when Toulouse visits Anfield) or Tuesdays, there are European nights.

So allez allez allez. You can’t conquer all of Europe without conquering Europa first.