The first touch is a bit heavy. Yet he retains possession of the ball and drives into the right channel at an undulating pace. Is tackled by Nathan Aké. Wiggles around theatrically on the turf for a while, grimaces and holds his ankle. Has a little argument with the referee. Chases a long ball as the next phase of play resets. Almost collides head-on with a teammate. Diverts his run into the penalty area. Scores a difficult header from four meters. Tears to the corner of celebration. Rips off his shirt. Being booked.
Darwin Núñez’s first taste of English football came against Manchester City in the 2022 Community Shield. In retrospect, this late passage of play – one minute of pure, liquid Darwin – was the moment that set the template. The hurricane. The cult hero. The agent of chaos. Andy Carroll with a slightly bigger price tag and a similar command of English. From the moment Núñez arrived on these shores, accompanied by a slew of unflattering social media clips and lazy comparisons to Erling Haaland, he would find his role as some kind of pantomime cow largely assigned to him.
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Jürgen Klopp has always said that Núñez was a long-term project rather than a short-term solution, a striker with a high ceiling and a much more complete game than many thought he was capable of. But as the misses and mistakes piled up during an indifferent first season in the Premier League, no one was ready to listen. Even as Núñez begins to find his way into an evolving Liverpool team, those first impressions have proven to be persistent.
But not everyone sees Núñez as a figure of fun. Back in his home country of Uruguay, Núñez is a much more ambitious figure: a man who rose from poverty and developed himself into one of the world’s best strikers through a relentless hunger for improvement. There you are much more likely to hear paeans to his phenomenal work rate, his clinical approach in front of goal and, above all, his immense importance to a nation shaking off the baggage of the past and leading a team to create an exciting builds a young team. by Marcelo Bielsa.
One of Bielsa’s first big decisions upon taking over in May was to get rid of Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani and make Núñez his pet project, the centerpiece of his attack, with all that entails in a Bielsa team. In the short term, it’s a relationship that has yielded immediate rewards. With five goals in his past four games, Núñez is the top scorer in South American World Cup qualifying, helping Uruguay to a first victory over Brazil in 22 years and a first victory in Argentina since 1937. In the longer term, it is Liverpool who may reap the benefits.
It all started with a Zoom call over the summer. Núñez was injured in June during Uruguay’s two international matches, but the new coach still had some homework for him. Bielsa had spent months diligently studying footage of Núñez for club and country and had noticed his tendency to attack the space between the opposition centre-backs. “He corrected a number of things,” Núñez says later. “For example, there is a play where the entire opponent is back. He [Bielsa] tells me: ‘Don’t run in front of the second central defender, run after it.’ So the central defender loses my position.”
Of course there was more than this. In Bielsa’s vision, the lone striker has an all-round role that goes far beyond goals. The number 9 has the responsibility of directing and organizing the press, using body shape and curved runs to direct the ball into more favorable areas. Neither Cavani nor Suárez, both 36 years old, have the engine to continue in this role any longer. By varying and timing movements, the striker is also better equipped to create space and provide opportunities for teammates.
Watch Núñez for Liverpool this season and you can see some of these changes in action. Against Newcastle in August, his two late goals came from peeling runs into the right channel, beyond centre-backs. On the counter-attack against Nottingham Forest in October, Núñez can be seen instinctively charging through the center before remembering to cut his run outside and set up a goal for Diogo Jota. Creatively, this is shaping up to be the most productive season of Núñez’s career, with one assist per 145 minutes in all competitions.
None of this should underestimate the role Klopp and Liverpool have played in Núñez’s development. One way to interpret Núñez’s recent improvement is as evidence of how a player can benefit from different and complementary influences. Bielsa always made it clear that he admired Klopp when he was at Leeds, paying tribute to the attractiveness of their game and the enthusiasm that Klopp conveys to his players.
But when asked to elaborate on the differences between Klopp and Pep Guardiola, Bielsa gave an interesting answer. “I feel like Guardiola’s intellectual construct is not accessible, at least for me,” he says. “Klopp is a coach with his own stamp, but he is more accessible to decode. Building tools to encourage creative play is what sets Guardiola apart.” In short, there is a complexity to Guardiola’s teams that no other coach – not even the great Klopp – can match. So in the hands of a teacher like Bielsa, there is always room to unlock new layers and levels.
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There is a school of thought that with Haaland, Rodri and Ederson shaking off injuries and a debilitating international leg break, this is not the worst time for Liverpool to head to the Etihad. The 4-4 draw against Chelsea a fortnight ago showed how City can occasionally be vulnerable to teams running straight at them, forcing them to defend one-on-one and pulling them around with clever movements.
But for Liverpool, a club not so much fighting for the title as trying to convince themselves they are competing for the title, the real battle is psychological. City beat them 4-1 in the corresponding match last season, and for all Liverpool’s improvements they lack a statement performance against serious opposition. There have been draws at Chelsea and Brighton, a bizarre defeat at Spurs and a straight win at Newcastle. Meanwhile, it has been eight years since they last won at City in the Premier League.
In many ways, Núñez is a microcosm of it all: a player who has overcome growing pains and turmoil, missed games and missed opportunities, rotation and ridicule, and who, for all his progress, has yet to test himself against the standard he once aspires to. range. For weeks, Liverpool have looked at it as if they could be the finished article, without ever quite convincingly proving it. The time for excuses, you feel, is now over.