Liverpool has won the Premier League title and the day could not have gone better. Had Arne Slot been able to write a script for how his first campaign in charge would go, it wouldn’t have been far off this.
Winning 5-1 against Spurs and showing the kind of soccer that has put them in this position, the Reds cruised to a comfortable victory despite initially going a goal behind. Off the field, the town was turned red and the celebrations were wild.
And on the Anfield turf, renditions of every Liverpool song going — the full songbook, including Trent Alexander-Arnold’s — were led by The Kop, and Slot gave a short speech in which he thanked Jurgen Klopp. Then, inside the bowels of the Main Stand, the party continued.
Alexander-Arnold led the renditions of Freed From Desire and showed — despite the uncertainty over his future — just how much winning the league title meant to him. Last weekend, he scored the winner at Leicester; in this one, with Conor Bradley missing through a minor injury, he started and played well.
Andy Robertson, the Liverpool left-back, up a giant bottle of Champagne, shaking it and then spraying it all over his teammates, before breaking into a rendition of “Campiones, campiones, ole, ole, ole!”.
“We enjoyed it [when we won the league in 2020], of course we did, but you can’t beat what we experienced today and how we went to the ground and the fans during and after the game,” he said. “Nothing quite compares to that and I’m glad we got to experience it that way as well.”
Darwin Nunez opted for a bottle of beer during his celebrations. He later shared a selfie of himself from the dressing room with a cigar in his hand, while Luis Diaz posted a picture of himself sitting in the dressing room with a massive grin plastered across his face.
It was Mohamed Salah who produced the iconic moment of the day, scoring to end his goal drought and then taking a selfie with The Kop. “Incredible. Incredible to win the Premier League here with the fans — [it] is something special,” he said.
“You saw that today and you saw it in the game. It’s an incredible feeling to win the Premier League here with Liverpool and the fans.
“This is way better [than five years ago], 100 per cent… It feels more special with the fans, but I don’t want to take that from anyone. You have a different group now and a different manager. To show you’re able to do it again is something special.”
Arne Slot took something of a backseat in the locker room, letting the players have their moment. And on the pitch earlier in the day, he had done something similar, quickly making sure that Jurgen Klopp’s contribution wasn’t forgotten.
“What he did before I even arrived here (getting the fans to chant his name), I think that is something not one manager ever did before,” Slot said in his post-match press conference. “So that is what definitely helped me.
“But apart from that, he helped me even more by the team he left behind and the culture he left behind in that team. The quality the players have was obvious for everyone, but the culture of hard work — not only from the players but also from the staff members — has been incredible.
“That is one of the reasons why we could achieve what we have achieved this season. For obvious reasons, I think it was a nice moment to thank him as well.”
Outside, thousands gathered on the road in front of The Kop, making it impossible to move as fans — those who were inside the stadium and those who went along without a ticket just to be there — savored every single second.
This is a party that has been 35 years in the making, that being the last time Liverpool won the league and was able to celebrate properly. With four weeks until the trophy lift, the celebrations have only just begun.
