Durban — It was perhaps justice that Mohamed Salah and Son Heung Min shared the Premier League’s Golden Boot award this season as both scored 23 goals.
On the one hand, Salah showed that he can be a playmaker as well by creating several goals for team-mates while Son phenomenally scored all of his goals from open play. Without the South Korean, Spurs would have been nowhere near the top four reckoning this season.
Son has now firmly established himself as the greatest ever Asian footballer to play in Europe and he would easily walk into the starting XI of any team in world football.
For Liverpool, losing out narrowly to City in the title race in two out of the last four seasons must be frustrating. Even though they have only won one Premier League title under Jurgen Klopp, the current Liverpool side must go down as a generational great team who are just about only outdone by Pep Guardiola and Manchester City.
Liverpool must also be praised for ensuring that the title race has gone down to the wire under Klopp. If not for him and his side, City would have gone on to win the last five titles on the bounce with the Premier League developing a reputation for being a “farmers league”.
Liverpool’s next challenge now is to try and win the Champions League. They are up against a Real Madrid side who are less technically gifted than them and will be looking for revenge against Los Blancos who beat them in the final four years ago. That was the game in which former Madrid defender Sergio Ramos injured Mohamed Salah early on before then Reds goalkeeper Loris Karius committed two howlers to give Madrid two goals.
Liverpool will face a difficult challenge against Madrid, not because Madrid are the best team in the world but more so because they have a habit of never giving up and finding goals out of nowhere, especially with 34-year-old Karim Benzema being in the form of his life. Carlo Ancelotti’s side are able to exploit every single weakness of their opponent as they did against Manchester City and always bring in a winning mentality into their game.
Klopp also proved that he is truly one of the managerial greats and can constantly reinvent himself to reach newer higher standards. After Liverpool had a disappointing title defence last season, many thought that they were “figured out” and would struggle to challenge for the title this season and that did look to be the case in the first half of the season.
However, they were the best team in the second half of the season and City only won the title by one point.
IOL Sport