Liverpool's dominance leads to talk of Bayern Munich-style dynasty

After witnessing Bavarian rivals' dominance as Borussia Dortmund manager, Klopp is now enjoying the view from the top at Anfield

Jurgen Klopp with goalkeeper Alisson. EPA

Liverpool's Egyptian midfielder Mohamed Salah celebrates scoring his team's second goal. AFP

Trent Alexander-Arnold after scoring the opening goal against Crystal Palace. EPA

Mohamed Salah celebrates after Sadio Mane scores their fourth goal. Reuters

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp before the match. Reuters

Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, centre, at the game. AP

Liverpool's Sadio Mane, right, celebrates scoring his side's fourth goal with Mo Salah. AP

Fabinho celebrates after scoring the third. EPA

Fabinho celebrates scoring the third goal with teammates. Reuters

Sadio Mane (C) takes a knee as he celebrates scoring the fourth goal. EPA

Liverpool's Sadio Mane celebrates his goal. EPA

Trent Alexander-Arnold (left) celebrates scoring the first. PA

At a little after half past five, German time, on April 6 2013, Jurgen Klopp let out a deep sigh. He had endured one of his more dramatic afternoons conducting his raucous, devoted orchestra at Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalen stadium, and overseen a comeback from 2-1 down to a 4-2 win. But it was irrelevant.

Confirmation reached Klopp and his Dortmund players that their preeminence in German football was over, that the defence of the Bundesliga title they had won in 2011 and retained in 2012 had been terminated in record time. Bayern Munich’s 1-0 win in Frankfurt that April 6 made Bayern German champions, with Dortmund marooned in second spot, the race won with eight games to spare.

For Klopp, the disappointments would pile up over the following weeks. Bayern signed up Dortmund’s brightest star, Mario Gotze. Bayern beat Dortmund in the Champions League final. Bayern appointed the most glamorous manager in Europe, Pep Guardiola, to maintain their supremacy. Bayern went on to finish the Bundesliga season fully 25 points ahead of Klopp’s deposed champions.

As he reflects on Liverpool’s triumph in the Premier League, Klopp’s third league title as a top-flight manager and his first in England, he will be entitled to think back on that 2012-13 season and how it felt to see such a wide gap between first place and second.

Klopp’s own previous triumphs, near misses and not-so-near misses will be among the many different lenses through which to appreciate Liverpool’s Premier League title of 2019-20.

The date they achieve it will be another. This is the season that ran over into June and July because of a pandemic that at one point threatened to close off the sporting calendar long-term.

There were moments when Liverpool’s cushion of advantage over Manchester City, stitched together so brilliantly between August and February, might have been rendered irrelevant by the season being abandoned.

What will seem startlingly relevant in the future is not much the date Liverpool clinched the title, but the matchday. Nineteen years ago, Manchester United sealed the Premier League title with five games to spare, then the swiftest conclusion of a title race since the top division in England was rebranded. Liverpool have done it with seven games to spare.

That United team were already the holders, and had won the 1999-2000 title with 18 points of headroom over second-placed Arsenal. In 1998-99, famously, United had won the Treble.

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There will be talk of Klopp’s Liverpool targeting United’s unique three-Premier-Leagues in a row - they have done it twice - and of a dynasty to be built.

Klopp will issue reminders that the elite end of English football is constructed to resist sustained dominance. Ask Manchester City, who only just held off the Liverpool juggernaut last season, having stylishly cantered to the 2018 title, 19 points ahead of second place by the end of that campaign.

Elsewhere in Europe’s major leagues, back-to-back championships seem an easier habit to develop, especially in the modern era where wealth accumulates more rapidly with success.

Juventus are chasing a ninth Serie A scudetto over the coming weeks. Bayern Munich have just captured their eighth uninterrupted. The first of the sequence, the one that so bruised Klopp in 2013, was the most emphatic in terms of the margin.

Paris Saint-Germain, Ligue 1 leaders by a distance when the league in France was cancelled because of the coronavirus crisis, have meanwhile been awarded their seventh championnat in eight seasons.

PSG are a club that, with their resources, utterly dwarf their domestic landscape. But they are also a cautionary tale against complacency. In 2015-16 PSG won a third title on the trot with eight matchdays to spare, and ended up 31 points clear of their nearest challenger. By a year later, they had lost that title, Monaco having overthrown the lavish spenders from the capital.

Juventus reached 102 points in a 38-game season in 2013-14. City reached 100 in 2017-18, as did Real Madrid in 2011-12 and Barcelona, ever eager to trump their rivals, reached their century of points the following La Liga season.

Liverpool will aspire to being the Premier League’s second-ever centurions and will easily make that target as long as, over the remaining seven games, they match their form from any seven-match run in the league campaign so far.

They might achieve at least a 20-point margin over second place, too, and set a new Premier League record. If they can make the gap 25 points, then Klopp would quietly make a note.

It is over seven years since he finished with his Bundesliga silver medal and glanced up at Bayern at the top of the podium as if Bayern were on the upper storey of a huge skyscraper. He’ll enjoy seeing what the view is like from the other way around.