It is officially Champions League final week, and while trying to distil this campaign down into individual moments is an indulgent task, to mark the lead up to a potentially seventh European Cup for Liverpool FC, the ECHO has selected seven critical moments from this season to revisit.
We started by returning to the day Alisson Becker rocked the football world, before going back to the signing of Ibrahima Konate. And today we look at the Anfield cult hero whose time at the club is about to end.
Divock Origi owed nothing to anyone.
The Belgian’s Liverpool legend status was safe heading into this season, even if the striker’s contributions practically dehydrated over a course of two years. Such is the power of a lights-out European Cup semi-final performance against Lionel Messi’s Barcelona and the killer blow in the final itself, all while continuing to be the incorrigible bane of Everton’s very existence (27.2 per cent of his Premier League goals are against his Merseyside rivals).
Origi, if he fancied, could get away with freeloading off those moments for the remainder of his career. And no-one would say anything about it. Bona-fide cult hero and all that.
Heading into this season, it seemed that is exactly what the cult hero was content with doing. Origi had not started a match since January. He had not made an appearance of any kind since March, when he made a 19-minute cameo against RB Leipzig in Liverpool’s last-16 Champions League second leg (naturally, Origi supplied an assist).
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Invariably, rumours swirled that Origi’s time at the club was over.
Then he rocked up to start against AC Milan in Liverpool’s Champions League group-stage clash in September and put in a vintage Origi performance. As you do.
In one sense, Origi’s remarkable stand against Milan was vindicating. He did not supply a last-gasp winner or necessarily stir an unlikely comeback. Liverpool should have run rampant with the goals, but as the affair turned into something of a nail-biter, it was Origi at the heart of all the good stuff. His comprehensive performance supplied Liverpool a victory from which the Reds’ Champions League dominance could build, but it also suggested that this old dog could be more of an asset this time around.
But for all the talk of surprises, perhaps this sort of performance should have been predicted.
Isn’t this what the man does?
In his 6,948 minutes of football at Liverpool, Origi has scored 41 goals and provided 18 assists, rounding out roughly to a goal involvement every 117.7 minutes. The figure alone is ridiculous. Toss in the fact that a good glut of those goal involvements are down-right wonders, and it feels, if Origi really wanted to, he could just break football.
But as the Champions League final approaches, Origi’s AC Milan performance deserves a specific nod.
That Origi will miss the Champions League final on Saturday due to injury risks feeling like a cruel twist of fate. On the biggest stage in Europe during marginal moments is when Origi comes to life, and it is not wrong to think the striker could turn tides if needs must. The fact Origi will wear the red-and-black stripes of AC Milan next season twists the knife that little inch more.
There is also a sense of debt. Without Origi’s sensational performance against AC Milan in the group stage opener, Liverpool’s Champions League run might have looked different. Momentum is a commodity in this business, and Origi helped establish Liverpool’s from the off, even if his own can be described as beautifully sporadic at best.
