The list of players to have donned the captain’s armband under Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool is long and varied, ranging from Premier League veterans such as Jordan Henderson and Gini Wijnaldum to rusty relics from a bygone era, see Joe Allen and Martin Skrtel.
Perhaps the most eye-catching name in a 19-strong roster, however, belongs to Pedro Chirivella. Not only because he was always on the fringes of a first-team role but also because of the strange circumstances that led to him following in the footsteps of Steven Gerrard, Graeme Souness and Ian Rush.
With Liverpool’s senior squad – and Klopp himself – gallivanting off to Qatar to take part in the Club World Cup, Neil Critchley led out a team consisting of U18 and U23 players for a 5-0 EFL Cup quarter-final thrashing at the hands of Aston Villa in 2019.
And Chirivella was the most experienced of the lot, a relative veteran in comparison to the likes of Louie Longstaff, Morgan Boyes and Sepp van den Berg.
He was, therefore, the natural pick to skipper the side at Villa Park.
Just six months later, Chirivella would reject a five-year contract at Anfield, the odd cup cameo no longer enough to satisfy the urges of a man desperate to play regular first-team football.
One year on, that decision certainly looks the right one.
Was Pedro Chirivella right to leave Liverpool?
Chirivella is one of the first names on Nantes’ team sheet these days and, if his recent performances are anything to go by, a deep-lying, string-pulling playmaker once labelled the second coming of Xabi Alonso is well on his way to becoming a leading light in the self-professed ‘League of Talents’.
“Chirivella, he is able to recover a lot of balls. He likes having the ball at his feet a lot, now he gets a lot of it,” Nantes coach Antoine Kombouare said after the Spaniard channelled his inner Xabi with a stunning strike in the 3-1 midweek victory over Brest, his first for Les Canaries.
“He is the first defender, he is able to dictate the game.”
A place in the Ligue 1 team of the week was a fitting reward for a man of the match performance.
“He is a wonderful player. He is a passing player and a big talent,” Klopp said in 2016.
Five years on, we’re starting to see what Klopp saw in a player who’s now going from strength to strength on the other side of the Channel.
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