“That’s the question everyone asks!”
But before Harrison Kingston answers that, he has a warning.
There is no ‘cheat’ code. No matter how much data and brainpower the Moroccan performance analysis director pours into his laptop, it never yields an implausible playbook.
When he worked at Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur or Burnley, he could not open a ready-made path to goal and success.
He was not on the road to Morocco in the World Cup semi-finals last month.
“If reality worked like that, you’d see a lot of things happening every weekend on a pitch that looked highly recommended,” Kingston told JEE News.
“That I will say or show something and then it will happen? That’s not really the logic of football.
“Football, in general, is quite chaotic. You’re trying to make sense of that chaos, trying to pick out some details that you can take advantage of.”
But, just sometimes, the 36-year-old can catch a glimpse of one of his details amid the many moving parts.
Kingston has set an example from his eight years at Liverpool. It was done by one of the few players. Not Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane or Roberto Firmino.
But, instead, the lesser-known Oakley Cannoneer.
Cannonier is now part of Liverpool’s under-21 team but, back on 7 May 2019, aged just 15, he was working as a ball boy.
“We lost 3-0 to Barcelona at the Camp Nou in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final,” Kingston remembers. Kingston remembers.
“We went away scratching our heads as to how we ended up with that scoreline, but looking back it reminded me of our last 16 match against Bayern Munich two months ago.
“The ball boys in Munich were like trained machines, getting the ball back into play so quickly. Talking to our staff afterwards, we found out it was a deliberate tactic; they wanted a fast rhythm to press us. Don’t get a chance.
“It was the opposite in Barcelona, the ball boys were extremely slow. A goal kick took a minute, a free kick took 30 to 45 seconds.
“Looking back, we could see it was deliberate. Barcelona were a team suited to a slower pace of play, rather than Jurgen’s [Klopp’s] increased intensity.
“So the coaches and analysts took it upon themselves, along with the kit manager who looks after them on Anfield match days, to show our ball boys a video of how they can help the team.
“We told them they were the 12th man, that they weren’t watching the game, they were in the game.”
In the 79th minute, with Liverpool leading 3–0 and the tie level, Cannonier took the opportunity to play his part.
Trent Alexander-Arnold played the ball off Sergi Roberto’s shin to win a corner. The ball went past Cannonier, who was placed a few yards away in front of advertising hoardings. But he ignored her. Instead he promptly threw a spare ball, which was in his hands, to Alexander-Arnold for a set piece. Barcelona’s defenders, accustomed to a slower pace, failed to concentrate. Divock Origi looked up and made eye contact with his teammate.
A quick cross, a decent finish, bedlam. And, perhaps, a theory proved.
“Ultimately it’s the players who take all the credit. They make decisions on the pitch and seize the moment,” says Kingston.
“Whether it [the goal] would have happened without our intervention, you never know, but you like to think that maybe you planted that seed and played a small part in a historic moment.”
In November last year, as he studied his current opponents, Belgium, Kingston thought he might see another detail that could blossom into something significant.
He was joined on screen by fellow Kingston analysts Moussa al-Habchi and Nabil Hayes, along with Moroccan goalkeeping coach Omar Harak.
The four men pointed out and discussed what they saw in a combination of French, Spanish, Darija [a dialect of Moroccan Arabic] and English.
And, finally, they planned what they could do in response.
