Lewis Koumas Shines in Liverpool's Carabao Cup Victory
Lewis Koumas stepped out of the Anfield tunnel with a trophy in one hand and his phone in the other. Before the interviews, before the analysis, there was only one call that mattered.
“That was my mum,” he said, grin still fixed from the 3-1 Carabao Cup win over Tottenham and the man of the match award Cody Gakpo had just passed him. “She was here tonight with my nan, my granddad and my sister. They were all in the box. I rang them straight away to show them the trophy and they were buzzing.”
It was a simple moment, but it told the story. A local lad, representing his boyhood club, standing under the lights at Anfield with his family watching on. Pride you can’t fake.
It also told another story: what it now takes to play in Andoni Iraola’s Liverpool front line.
A manager’s demand, a forward’s response
Iraola had been blunt before kick-off. After a flat draw with Fulham on Saturday, the Liverpool head coach called out his forwards, demanding sharper pressing, greater aggression, more work without the ball. The comments were clearly aimed at bigger, more established names.
Koumas was not one of the targets. On this evidence, he might have been the answer.
Against Roberto De Zerbi’s Spurs, the 20-year-old ran himself into the ground. He pressed, harried, dragged defenders into places they didn’t want to go. He created space and chances for others, the sort of selfless shift that doesn’t always make the highlights but wins a manager’s trust.
“The energy he shows is contagious,” Iraola said afterwards. “I’m very happy for him. He does it in training every day. He is very clear what he needs to do, what the team needs.”
Koumas turns 21 on Saturday, the day before Liverpool travel to Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. The compliment from his coach could have gone to his head. It didn’t.
“I think how I play is ultimately the Liverpool way,” he said, matter-of-fact rather than boastful. “We’ve always been a club where players have to give absolutely everything on the pitch. We’re bringing that back now and the crowd are loving it.
“A lot of it is about what I do off the ball. The gaffer has shown trust to me that I can carry out his plans in terms of how we want to play tactically. I was happy to do that for him. It gives me so much motivation the fact he’s putting me in for a game like this. I want to kick on now.”
From loan circuits to Anfield nights
Iraola didn’t hesitate when he arrived in the summer. Within weeks he told then sporting director Richard Hughes that he wanted Koumas in the first-team squad, not out on loan again. The message was clear: he saw a role for him here, now.
Koumas had already impressed on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US, and this campaign has brought landmark steps. Premier League minutes off the bench. A Champions League debut. Now, a first senior man of the match award in red.
Could he have imagined this back in July?
“No, I would have woken up!” the Wales international laughed. “I would have thought I was dreaming. It’s crazy. But I’m just really happy and very grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given. You never know when your last time on the pitch for Liverpool is going to be. I just try to leave everything out there every time.”
He speaks like someone who has had to wait. And he has.
Capped 12 times for Wales, Koumas has long been on the international radar, yet his club career has moved at a slower, more unforgiving pace. Jürgen Klopp handed him his first Liverpool start more than two years ago, and he marked that full debut with a goal in a 3-0 FA Cup fifth-round win over Southampton. Then the door closed again.
He did not play for his boyhood club’s first team again until Iraola arrived. Instead, he spent the 2024-25 season on loan at Stoke, the first half of 2025-26 at Birmingham, and the second half at Hull. Hard miles, far from Anfield, for a forward who can operate centrally or from the wing.
“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” he insisted. He namechecks Michael Owen and Gareth Bale as childhood inspirations, two players who exploded onto the scene as teenagers. His route has been slower, but no less driven.
“I always had the drive that I would get here. The reason for going out on loan was to prepare for this moment. A lot of hunger can be lost in the game with how things go. But for me coming through the pre-academy and right through the academy, my hunger has always been there. My hunger comes from representing Liverpool Football Club, wanting to give everything for the best club in the world.”
The Liverpool way, reborn in a forward’s sprint
Koumas is Chester-born, but his football identity is pure Liverpool. He is also the son of Jason Koumas, the former Tranmere and West Bromwich Albion playmaker, yet there was no sense of entitlement in the way he spoke, or in the way he played. Just graft and clarity.
He talks about “the Liverpool way” and you can see what he means. The relentless running. The willingness to chase lost causes. The understanding that off-the-ball work is not an extra, but the foundation.
On nights like this, when a young forward leads the press and drags the rest of the team with him, that phrase feels less like a slogan and more like a standard being reasserted.
Iraola has placed his faith in him. The crowd responded to every sprint, every tackle, every chase. His family watched from the box. His manager watched from the touchline.
The man of the match trophy sat in his hand. The phone in the other. For Lewis Koumas, this did not feel like a one-off. It felt like the start of the career he always believed he would have at Liverpool.
