Liverpool are champions of the 2024/2025 English Premier league after defeating Tottenham Hotspurs 5-1
– How Arne Slot’s team sealed special moment
Liverpool finally confirmed the 2024/25 Premier League title by smashing Spurs 5-1 at Anfield on a Sunday afternoon that looked like it was made for the Reds.
Before the match the Anfield faithful had nearly turned the air red. This was the big moment. They were heirs apparent nearly all season. It was time to sound the horns and play the harps. Liverpool needed at least a point to seal the title at Anfield. Arne Slot mentioned before the game that it was their responsibility to ensure that it happened, for the fans.
It was never in doubt. Ange Postecoglou’s team have not been that team all season. With the Reds ready to reach out and grab the long-awaited honour, at the long-awaited time, it would have needed something special from Spurs to stop them. They had neither the ability nor the will.
From the sounding of the whistle, this was Liverpool’s game, although the goal was delayed. Mohamed Salah’s shot went well over the bar. Cody Gakpo’s beauty overhead kick didn’t find the net. Then all of a sudden, Spurs took the lead. Dominic Solanke’s header from a corner sank into the net and Anfield stared on.
Four minutes later, Salah stuck a pass through to Dominik Szoboszlai, the Hungarian slid it through to Luis Diaz, who slid to finish. The equaliser withstood an offside check. Anfield was alive again. If that goal was good, the second was even better. Liverpool dispossessed Spurs at the edge of the box and Alexis MacAllister fired the ball into the top right corner with his left foot.
There was an audacity and desire about the Reds, the kind that happens only at Anfield. Liverpool were hungry, and Spurs obliged. Postecoglou’s side failed to clear a corner again and Cody Gakpo defied the traffic in the box to stick Liverpool’s third into the far post.
In the second half it was all Liverpool, a question of how many more they could score. It could have been six, it could have been seven. But the Reds were more interested in getting their talisman on the scoresheet. And on the scoresheet Salah got, when he collected the ball from Szoboszlai at the edge of the box, twisted away from his man, and struck a clean shot into the bottom right corner at the near post. It was a goal worthy of Salah, and worthy of the occasion.
From that moment on, it felt like a party rather than a football match. Destiny Udogie turned Alexander-Arnold’s cross into his own net, but only because Salah was just over his shoulder waiting to finish. Anfield was letting out the noise. Beautiful as Liverpool’s free-flowing football was, it began to feel like the second-most important thing. Red balloons were entering the pitch. The flares waited until the full time whistle, and the sky over Anfield turned red.
