The Liverpool striker scored a brace and was key in Liverpool’s victory against Newcastle.
At a sold-out St James’ Park, against a Champions League rival like Newcastle and with a numerical disadvantage after Virgil van Dijk’s dismissal, Liverpool were losing 1-0 with ten minutes to go against the Magpies thanks to a goal by Anthony Gordon. But everything changed when the German coach withdrew Alexis Mac Allister and brought on Darwin Núñez.
The Uruguayan silenced Newcastle to keep the Merseyside team unbeaten in the league this season. After a difficult start for the 24-year-old striker due to a lack of minutes in the face of fierce competition in attack, Darwin stepped up. Not only that, thanks to his two goals, the player from Artigas joined the select club of Uruguayan players who have scored ten or more goals in the English league together with Luis Suárez (69), Gustavo Poyet (54), Edinson Cavani (12) and Diego Forlan (10).
In the three league games played so far, the former Benfica striker has not started in any of them, with Klopp selecting Mohamed Salah, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz. After his display at Newcastle, Klopp himself acknowledged Darwin’s dissatisfaction with not playing as much as he would like “but you can’t have more than 11 players playing all the time, so you have to have stability. We need to create a new way of playing and Darwin can be a key part of that.”
Help from Bielsa
Marcelo Bielsa is one of the men behind his emergence. In an interview with Sport 890, Darwin revealed that he held meetings via Zoom with the Uruguay coach, who analysed aspects of the Liverpool striker’s game. “It was a very good talk with him. He showed me some of my games and corrected several things. He explained to me some things that he thinks are better. I hope we [Uruguay] do well because we want to give joy to the people of Uruguay”.