Liverpool coming to terms with European change that could pay off in long-term

If Europa League qualification was the unwanted prize of last season’s malaise, Liverpool’s discontent has soothed considerably in the months since.

With Jurgen Klopp keen to stress about how this is “year one” for his new-look and exciting young squad, the mood and attitude towards the upcoming European campaign will be a world away from what has preceded it in recent years when it comes to the continent’s secondary tournament.

For Klopp and his staff, it is an opportunity to give some vital early experience to youngsters with huge potential like Ben Doak and Bobby Clark, while some of the more experienced members of the team will spy a chance for some real game-time across the group stages and beyond.

For players like Joe Gomez, Kostas Tsimikas, Wataru Endo and Caoimhin Kelleher in goal, the Europa League is the best route into the Liverpool team between now and Christmas, while it will be interesting to see who from the front five options the Reds boss selects at the top end of the pitch.

Liverpool’s strength in depth is such that Klopp will likely not have to trouble too many of his big guns if he doesn’t want to, while their status as one of the competition’s favourites will be justified if they approach it as seriously as they would a Champions League term.

For a relatively fresh squad ready to emerge from the shadow of the 2018-2022 vintage, that the first tentative steps will be taken in the Europa League is not the imposition it might once have appeared.

Klopp stressed, with much sincerity, that he did not know the meaning of the phrase “booby prize” when it was put to him what the Europa League represented back in May.

The Reds boss was speaking both from a figurative and literal point of view and while the Champions League will always be the gold standard for a club like Liverpool, a year in the Europa League offers the manager the opportunity to win the one competition he is yet to during his time on Merseyside.

And with the prospect of a mouthwatering final in Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on the cards in late May, why shouldn’t Liverpool approach the competition with the same energy they would for the European Cup?

Back in 2015, their presence in the competition was very much viewed as a demotion after a wretched Champions League campaign ended with a third-place finish behind Real Madrid and Basel. As Brendan Rodgers’s reign started to unravel, the Europa League was looked at through narrowed eyes and with a grimace for supporters on the whole.

Five years earlier, their participation was also down to the fact that a Champions League term had veered irretrievably off course as Rafa Benitez fought in vain against the turning of the tide for his career on Merseyside.

The 2010/11 campaign was also an irritant for a dizzied fanbase struggling with the in-house fighting of detested owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett alongside the failing Roy Hodgson regime on the pitch.

Few tears were shed when Sir Kenny Dalglish’s Reds were eventually eliminated by Portuguese side Braga on St Patrick’s Day, 2011 while Rodgers’s side were dumped out two years later at the hands of Zenit St Petersburg to a collective shrug.

Liverpool have rarely been welcoming bedfellows for the Europa League this century. Aside from the famous triumph of 2001 under Gerard Houllier, the competition has more often than not come into focus when the club has been in a state of flux. Too often it has been an emblem for underachievement and a synonym for second rate.

The memorable run to the final in 2016, when Klopp was just a few months into his time, is the one that bucks the trend as it gathered momentum the longer it went, but the focus at the time was perhaps more on where Liverpool could go under long-term vision of a manager who they were frankly fortunate to call their own seven years ago. Again, it was a squad in transition.

But while the 2023/24 campaign again greets a new Liverpool team still finding its way, there is a settled nature to things that provides supporters with plenty of scope for optimism as they get ready to tackle a winnable group, starting with Austrian side LASK on Thursday.