Roberto Firmino: A true Liverpool legend

It’s been some ride for Firmino, who will leave Anfield when his contract expires at the end of the season. It’s been eight years of magic, you’d have to say. Of flicks and tricks and goals and assists, trophies and wonderful, wonderful memories. 

Should he play against Aston Villa on Saturday - and if he is even 20 percent fit, he surely will - he will have clocked up 361 Liverpool appearances. There have been 109 goals, 72 assists and six pieces of silverware in that time. 

What a signing, what a footballer. He was the man who made the Reds Club World Champions in 2019, the one whose big goals in big games helped end that 30-year wait for a league title.

He’s the one who redefined the role of a Liverpool No.9, who barely gave interviews, hardly spoke English, but whose character and personality made him adored by team-mates and fans alike. He’s the one who made ‘no-look’ finishes and kung-fu celebrations a thing.

He’s the one signed under Brendan Rodgers who became Jurgen Klopp’s favourite. Klopp would never admit that publicly, but just have a look at his face this weekend. He wanted Firmino to stay, and no wonder. 

What a player he has been for him, and for Liverpool.

It is easy to forget now, given everything that has happened since, but Firmino’s start to life at Liverpool was far from auspicious. Bought from Hoffenheim in the summer of 2015, his signing soon came to represent the discord which existed between the manager, Rodgers, and the club’s scouting and recruitment team, the now-infamous ‘transfer committee’. He was seen, in many ways, to be emblematic of a failing system and a failing club.

After a difficult 2014-15 campaign, which had finished with a 6-1 humiliation at Stoke City, Rodgers had, to many fans’ surprise, been granted a stay of execution, with Liverpool opting instead to dismiss key members of the Ulsterman’s backroom staff.

Rodgers, desperate to reignite his reign, was keen to sign centre-forward that summer. Christian Benteke of Aston Villa was his No.1 choice, but the recruitment team, led by chief scout Barry Hunter, head of recruitment Dave Fallows and the soon-to-be sporting director Michael Edwards, had identified Firmino, and pushed strongly for his signing. 

In the end, Liverpool bought both. They paid £29 million ($36m) for Firmino before coughing up the £32.5m ($40.5m) needed to trigger Benteke’s release clause at Villa. As one source put it, “it was a case of ‘one signing for the manager and one for the club’."

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s fair to say the ‘club signing’ proved to be the shrewder of the two.

Firmino’s early weeks were difficult. With Benteke being used as the No.9, the Brazilian began the 2015-16 season on the bench, and started only four games before Rodgers was sacked at the start of October. When he did play, he was deployed either as a wide forward, a No.10 or, in one ignominious defeat at Old Trafford, as a left wing-back.

Klopp’s arrival, though, would change everything. Firmino was injured for the German’s first game in charge, away at Tottenham, but within a fortnight he was starting as a centre-forward at Chelsea, playing a starring role in a 3-1 win against Jose Mourinho’s reigning champions at Stamford Bridge.

Klopp had seen Firmino at close quarters during his time as manager of Borussia Dortmund, and had been impressed when told that Liverpool had taken the plunge. “Smart signing,” he thought, and when Firmino grabbed his first Reds goal in a 4-1 battering of Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City at the Etihad, plenty were starting to agree with him.

He wasn’t a classic No.9, by any means. He certainly wasn’t a Benteke, whose game was about power and aerial prowess. But Firmino's touch, awareness and clever runs meant he could pull defences apart, opening up space for others to thrive.

That selflessness, that intelligence would come to define his time at Liverpool as much as any goal ever could.

Of course every conductor needs an orchestra, and while Firmino’s first season at Liverpool was decent enough - 11 goals in 49 appearances in all competitions - it was only when Klopp began putting the pieces together alongside him that his brilliance began to truly shine.

First came Sadio Mane, signed from Southampton in the summer of 2016. The Senegal star immediately added speed, dynamism and goals from wide, winning Liverpool’s Player of the Year award in his first season.

Then, 12 months later, the Reds struck the jackpot once again, paying around £37m ($46m) to sign Mohamed Salah from Roma. It’s fair to say that particular transfer worked out nicely.

Together, Firmino, Mane and Salah laid waste to the Premier League, to everyone in fact. Their first season brought a combined 91 goals and a Champions League final - the semi-final first leg, against Roma at Anfield, is one of best performances any forward line has ever produced - their second brought 69 goals and European Cup glory in Madrid and their third delivered 57 goals, a European Super Cup, a Club World Cup and, most memorably of all, that elusive Premier League title.

By the time the trio was broken up by Mane’s departure to Bayern Munich in the summer of 2022, they had scored 338 goals in five seasons together. A quite remarkable record, and one which makes all three of them, in their own right, bona fide Anfield legends.

Firmino didn’t feature in Liverpool’s win at Leicester on Monday. He only returned to training after a muscle issue on Wednesday. It was his name, though, which was ringing out as the final minutes of the Reds’ comfortable 3-0 triumph were played out. There was something that the [travelling] Kop wanted you to know, indeed.

That chant, with its ‘Siiiii Senor’ and its proclamation that Firmino is ‘the best in the world’ will go down as one of the best and most popular in Liverpool history. It’s been sung across Europe, across the world, over the past few years. Had you followed the Reds as closely as this correspondent has, you’ll have heard it on trains and in airports, at countless motorway service stations and from countless away ends. It's what they call an earworm, for sure.

Firmino loves it, and he looked genuinely moved by the reaction of supporters, and team-mates, at the King Power. Just wait until he hears Anfield belting it out on Saturday.

It has been a long goodbye for Firmino, with news of his intended departure breaking at the beginning of March. Klopp admitted that he had been left “surprised” by the decision - he had wanted, and expected, Firmino to sign for another year - but in the cold light of day, a parting of the ways now makes sense for all parties.

Firmino will be 32 in October, and while he is far from finished as a player - he never relied on speed even in his pomp - it is clear that his influence on Liverpool has waned in recent seasons. He started only 17 games in all competitions last season, and he has started only 17 this term, too. He missed the 2022 Carabao Cup final through injury and was on the bench for both the FA Cup and Champions League finals. Having been the Reds’ marathon man for years, the niggles, the knocks and the muscle strains have begun to chip away at him. 

He’s still capable of influencing games, of course, but while he never has, and never should, be judged solely on goal output, it is telling that his last four seasons have seen him score only 43 goals in all competitions. Even his assist figures have dropped, with only 10 across the past two campaigns.

Klopp is already building what he hopes will be a new, formidable frontline. With Salah still delivering, and with Diogo Jota, Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo all 26 or under and capable of playing numerous positions, the pieces are potentially in place for a new era of attacking excellence at Anfield.

It won’t, in all likelihood, be as special, as thrilling or as successful as the one just gone, however. Life moves on and so does football, but there will be plenty of tears as Firmino says farewell this weekend.

He was one of a kind, a modern-day Liverpool great, and he’ll be sorely missed.