What we learned from Liverpool vs Yokohama F. Marinos

Analysis of what was far from plain sailing for the Reds in Japan.

Liverpool won the super prestigious ‘2025 J League World Challenge’ on Wednesday afternoon. I mean, in what other competition does the Player of the Match receive a comically oversized award symbolising a cheque for one million yen?

The clash at the Nissan Stadium ticked all the pre-season boxes: a pitch reminiscent to the Somme battlefield in 1916, LFCTV remaining spectacularly unhelpful and Trey Nyoni standing out as one of the best on the pitch.

For Trey it’s very much a case of been there done that, though. Against Real Betis and Arsenal out in the States last summer the then-17-year-old midfielder was outstanding, before capping off a brilliant summer with a well-taken goal in front of the Kop for Sevilla’s visit.

This summer has been all about another whizkid: Rio Ngumoha. You tell yourself not to get carried away, not to pin too much on a 16-year-old. Be calm, be measured. However, you watch five minutes of Rio and suddenly all that restraint melts away. The boy is a joke. His second goal of the pre-season may have arrived on Wednesday but that doesn’t even tell 10% of the picture of what this young gun is doing to established senior defenders.

We’re at the beginning of August and this was (Stoke included) the fourth pre-season match to-date. Considering that the Athletic Club meeting on Monday, at Anfield, is going to feature a strange double-header setup, Wednesday’s win over Yokohama technically should have been the culmination of the several weeks of work that’s been done both at home and in Asia.

In some ways, it was. There is a great deal of intriguing tactical stuff to jump into and it seems like Florian Wirtz has, remarkably, already synced to Arne’s plan. To be honest that’s the wrong verb. Florian is already orchestrating. He’s tying everything together from back to front. Alright, £116m and all, so maybe it’s expected, but honestly, I thought we’d be easing into the hype a bit slower.

On the flip side, though, the conditions were (genuinely) so abhorrent that it would be a bit misguided to be making severe conclusions from it. Every first touch turned into a duel and the surface was Yokohama’s best defender.

Then there’s the obvious fact that our new number nine has played just 45 minutes in Liverpool red; Ekitike hasn’t even stepped foot in the city yet. It’s expected that several more will come through the door and if an astonishing Isak deal is landed, everything we’ve seen in recent weeks will explode into confetti anyway.