Way up here, you can see for miles

Photo by the author, May 2024

I realized something today, the last day of the brief Premier League offseason, in between my new ritual of Googling “Isak transfer update” five times a day and becoming an instant expert in Italy U19 center halves:

I’ve barely thought about Trent Alexander-Arnold since June.

To call the situation facing Liverpool Football Club ahead of the 2025-2026 opener a “dream scenario” is mostly fine. It’s an accurate statement. Look how high we are — above us only sky. But something is off. For me, the thought on season’s eve is that being here is surreal, and in a very Liverpool way.

There is so much ahead. The 20th league title means we come back from summer brimming. Fans of suffering clubs work to feel hope; we bask in latent joy. But since something different seems to still stalk Liverpool Football Club, every so often something awful happens and the suffering still comes.

The great outpouring from the footballing world, the universal respect from mutual competitors and the frank display of open, unabashed empathy and solidarity from supporters of all clubs when Diogo Jota and Andre Silva were lost is a great testament to those two as players and as people. But this very real shared tragedy we’ve suffered also says something very loud about our club and its place in all this.

When we shuffle into the pub today or queue up a stream or prepare to sneak updates during a meeting, let’s first acknowledge the bounty: Defending league champions, pegged to win it again. Likely winners, not just hopefuls, in European competition. Retained the Premier League Player of the Season and the Premier League Young Player of the Season. Signed Germany’s best player. Signed one of France’s best young players. Signed the best young left back in the Premier League.

There are more signings than that; even without Alexander Isak breaking John Henry’s credit limit for the second time in a summer, there are more signings to come.

Success has bred expectation, not belief, in more success. A queue is forming. The vibes are sound. Everybody wants to come play with us all of a sudden.

And we did this – we have this – after seeing our parade tainted by what would be called a terrorist attack and not an “incident” if the demographics were different. We go down the boozer and smile at the familiar and unfamiliar people in similar-colored shirts after suffering an incomparable tragedy on July 3.

I’d forgotten it until today, but: Diogo Jota’s last game was the Nations League final. He was holding a trophy the last time he walked off a soccer field. He had had the best conceivable start to the summer, the greatest of his life. His marriage lasted ten days.

We follow sports for the triumph and the tragedy. What does it mean for a club to literally lose someone, and - we can say now - a club hero with big moments and better vibes whose song is rollicking and will we ever be able to sing it again without tearing up? And there are the moments where we’re reminded that this is why we’re here. This does feel different.

It is good and proper that our club has forever a No. 20. Maybe it is good and proper that the burden fell to a club that already knows the meaning of tragedy. But this shit really does keep happening to us.

But then it was right back to the transfer market and Googling Isak hourly. Rewarded with “best” transfer market in the history of the club. If reports out of Tyneside are true, Alexander Isak would rather do sit-ups at home — and in a World Cup year - than play for anyone else but us. Arne Slot did amazing things with what Jurgen Klopp handed him, and now Slot has gone shopping with a Rafael Devers-sized budget that has put every FSGout troll farm out of business.

“There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen,” as Lenin did not once say.

I looked at what I wrote this time last year. It was all open questions. Not doubt — curiosity, with high expectations. No new players but a new coach inheriting a top squad albeit with the top three players all out of contract. A new feeling and philosophy of possibility and positivity despite another PITA of a trip to the transfer market. Banishing a sinking feeling that the chance for the very best had just slipped by us and would not be back anytime soon.

And then winning the 20th title with so much authority and inevitability. It wasn’t close, you know. You can’t say nobody expected last season – though every last pundit on a 30-person BBC panel picked wrong, The Guardian’s Barry Glendenning did predict Liverpool would win the league – but surely only madmen or fools would have said Arne Slot would win his first six road games, 11 out of his first 12, the quickest manager to win 15.

Then after the Jude Bellingham and Moises Caicedo and Martin Zubimendi fiascoes, Fenway Sports Group manages to challenge the Smaug-sized state hoards on which competing clubs are based through respectful arbitrage. It meant something to see Slot and the club apparenly treat Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz right, as players and commodities with value and as humans. It looks to me like Slot was honest about their roles and their futures at the club — and then the club had everything already covered. Everyone could move on with respect while also maximing returns with minimal fuss.

These are the consequences of supporting a football club with ambitious and engaged ownership, that can keenly and ruthlessly evaluate talent, that has history and emotion and swagger that is not a front for human-rights abuses. We are run by people and not deluded weirdo robots. This is a rare and special thing. It is our gift to be here.

All this is going on. And then here are the new kits. We’re even going to look better than everybody else.

Winning the league and then getting all the players you want - and then getting more. Do you feel gluttony at all? Are we edging towards decadence? Having all this going so well is waking up on Christmas morning after opening all your gifts.

But then you remember Rute Cardoso, the three kids without a dad and the parents who buried two sons.

This year will have some growing pains and learning curves as the new parts gel and adjust to England and to the Premier League. Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike will be under some real pressure to play significant roles but based on what little I’ve seen, in the ho-hum Charity Shield and in short clips from training, these are special players. There is still need of another center half; wouldn’t it be grand if Joe Gomez’s luck and health both stayed intact?

Then there will be another unwelcome midseason interruption. The Africa Cup of Nations tournament is in Morocco from just before Christmas to mid-January. Mohamed Salah will want to win it, in the same way he wants to win everything. We should understand and celebrate this.

I won’t say that winning is somehow diminished or that a second-place finish will be all right. That isn’t why you do this. I’m reminded, though, of what the mercurial star on another FSG property once said when facing an elimination game. No big deal, Manny Ramirez said – there’s always next year. He was right, of course. It helped he also won a World Series trophy not long after.

I think our summer demonstrates this principle in action. You play to win. You want to win. You recognize that there is more to life if you don’t. It would be better if you did.

And since triumph follows tragedy, you feel like something is happening.

Not long after the car wreck in Portugal a visibly affected Jose Mourinho spoke to an English reporter. Liverpool’s sometime nemesis was deeply affected. It was normal to feel unsettled. “Maybe one day we will understand, but not now,” he said. Mourinho then told a story from his days at Porto.

One year, on the eve of a season 30 years ago, that team also lost a player. Rui Felipe also died in a car crash. Porto then won the league. “And we were champions, I think, for him,” Mourinho said. Liverpool, he added, will do what they do best as a city, a club, and a fanbase.

“Maybe they lose a player,” he said. “But maybe they win even more soul than what they have.”