For Alisson and Roberto Firmino, it has been quite a summer. The pair won the Champions League with Liverpool in June, before nipping back to Brazil to win the Copa América on home soil for their country. Alisson only conceded one goal in the tournament, while Firmino’s partnership with Gabriel Jesus more than made up for the absence of Neymar Junior through injury.
They were joined, of course, by former Reds’ teammate Philippe Coutinho, who played in each of the Seleção’s Copa América games. He too shouldered quite the burden in the absence of his good friend Neymar. Coutinho has endured a pretty miserable time since leaving Anfield for Barcelona in January 2018. Jurgen Klopp used the windfall to sign Alisson and Virgil van Dijk and never looked back, for Liverpool FC infos everyday.
Coutinho was a significant player at Anfield for five years and the hey creative hub of the team that came so close to winning the league title in 2013-14. With Luis Suarez, Daniel Sturridge and a teenage Raheem Sterling ahead of him, Coutinho was the creative coil in Liverpool’s well-sprung attack as the Reds’ plundered 101 Premier League goals.
He didn’t earn as many headlines as Coutinho, but Lucas Leiva is revered by the Liverpool fan base for his decade long tenure as a quiet, unfussy, hard-working defensive midfielder. Signed from Grêmio, where he played as a number 10, as a 20-year old, Lucas was converted into a deep-lying midfield player.
Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson, Kenny Dalglish and Brendan Rodgers all came to count on the native of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil’s Midwest. His role became slightly reduced when Jurgen Klopp arrived and demanded a more energetic approach to his midfield, but Lucas still earned the respect of the Reds’ boss was his professionalism and discipline.
“Whenever a player leaves a club it is always a sad moment, but even more so when the player is as popular and influential as Lucas,” Klopp said upon his departure for Lazio in 2017. “It goes without saying that all of the lads wish him the very best and from my own point of view I’ve got no doubt that he will be a success in Italy because he is one of the best professionals I have worked with.”
Left-back Fabio Auerlio enjoyed a six-season spell with the Merseyside club too, from 2006 to 2012. Signed by Rafa Benitez from his former club Valencia, Aurelio took some time to settle into life in England, but eventually held down the left-back spot until the signing of Jose Enrique in 2011.
Fabio Aurelio was an attacking full-back in the typical lateral style and, to complete the stereotype, he also took a mean free-kick. Despite suffering a ruptured achilles tendon in his debut season at Anfield, Aurelio became a key member of the squad and one of a smattering of Brazilians who have lit up Anfield and earned a place in the hearts of the Liverpool faithful.
