There are no prizes for identifying the highlight of Divock Origi’s Liverpool career so far given it arrived one week ago on a raucous night at the Westfalenstadion complete with a valuable away goal against Borussia Dortmund. The lowlight is clear too, although you have to go further back to a time before the striker’s Liverpool career had truly begun. “It was an awful year,” Origi says of last season’s loan at Lille, a condition of his £9.6m transfer to Anfield from the French club in July 2014. “It was a special situation but I’m sure it made me a lot stronger when I came here.”
Patience is being rewarded for Liverpool and Origi, who approaches Thursday’s Europa League quarter-final second leg against Dortmund in form and vying for a starting role ahead of, or possibly alongside, Daniel Sturridge once again. Two goals in a destructive substitute’s appearance against Stoke City on Sunday confirmed that Jürgen Klopp finally has options in attack.
“Beforehand, he just said: ‘Play your game,’” remembers the 20-year-old on the Liverpool manager’s advice before the first leg. Origi discovered he was starting only when Klopp announced the team. “We had a tactics talk as a team and he just said to me: ‘Play your game.’ Afterwards he just said: ‘Well done!’ He knows I have a long way to go. I know that too, so I just try to enjoy the moments when I help the team. I know I have to be more consistent and that is what I am trying to do.
“To play a game like this is the reason I came to Liverpool. I have come to play in big games. I was very happy to get game time and when someone shows confidence in you, you want to reward it back. I am just glad everything went OK. The manager had a very hard choice to make but what I have learned is that we are in a group with a lot of talent. It was nice.”
Origi turns 21 on Monday but the admission that he needs to improve having dragged the Dortmund defence to distraction only last week shows he already possesses a mature, humble outlook that bodes well for Liverpool. The entire time in his company does, in truth. “I am enjoying my football,” the striker explains. “I feel I am expressing myself better on the field but also that people have to see my full potential. You have to make steps to get there and I am just working hard to do that.”
Last season’s experience at Lille, distracted by thoughts of Liverpool, may have aided his mental strength but there are physical reasons for his recent improvement in Klopp’s team. The German’s man-management prowess was evident on Sunday. Origi’s second goal against Stoke was “only possible with confidence”, said Klopp. “He really wanted to shoot. It was not a cross. I was not surprised.” Origi laughs at the description. “It was a cross-shot,” he says. Klopp also praised the Belgium international for deciding to bulk up in the gym during his last injury lay-off. The reality is that Klopp told him to after starting Origi in his first four games as manager.
“You realise you have to be physically strong when you come to the Premier League because it is a very intensive league,” the player admits. “It was a surprise at first because it is very fast, physical and intensive. You have a lot of big players in every team and it is different to other leagues, where you maybe have three or four very good teams. Here there are very good teams everywhere, a lot of big competitions, so you have to be ready.
“I have been trying to work on this and I also think it is important for a football player to improve in every respect. It’s not like I was on a mission, I just came here and saw how professional all the players were. I was 19 years old. I only started playing top football when I was 17 and a half. I only have small experience in the first team. Coming here, seeing how the big players worked, it inspired me. I have made steps and I am starting to see the difference.”
Klopp sent Dortmund scouts to monitor Origi at Lille but claimed the then teenager was too expensive for his former club. “I wasn’t aware at the time,” he says of Dortmund’s interest. “My management was more aware of the interest from other clubs but when Liverpool came my heart just said: Liverpool.” The striker is confident of completing the job against Thomas Tuchel’s team at Anfield. “This will be a very big game so I think the atmosphere at Anfield will be special,” he predicts. “That will only make us stronger and we have a big chance of winning it.”
Another starring role against the second best team in Germany would accelerate Origi’s transformation from last season when, after eight goals in 33 games for Lille and a 20-game drought, he was named in L’Equipe’s worst Ligue 1 team of the season. He harbours no resentment.
Origi says: “At the end of my career it will only make it more special when I can say: ‘The year before, this happened.’ Even for players younger than me, you never give up. When you believe in yourself people can say what they want but when you work hard and you have your head clear then everything is possible. I hope in the future it will be a nice story to tell.”
