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Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
The Liverpool cult hero opened up about his time at Liverpool—and the difficult decision to leave after a decade on Merseyside.
Not many players in modern football spend will spend ten years at any club. Fewer still spend that kind of time in one place when they didn’t grow up at the club, living in the city, and working their way up through the levels of its academy.
For Liverpool in the Premier League era, Lucas Leiva is one of the few foreign born players to have done so, with the Brazilian midfielder arriving at Anfield in the summer of 2007 as an attack-minded player and leaving in 2017 as a cult hero and fan favourite.
In between there were struggles—struggles to win over the fans, struggles with injuries, struggles to find a role under new managers—but in the end Liverpool the club and city became home and that made his eventual departure a difficult one.
“I cried at my final meeting with Jürgen Klopp in the summer of 2017,” Lucas reflected in a conversation with the club’s site about some of the lesser known stories from his years at Liverpool under Rafa Benitez, Roy Hodgson, Brendan Rodgers, and Jürgen Klopp.
“I spoke many times with Jürgen—our relationship is still fantastic—but there were two times I spoke to him about maybe leaving. Jürgen came in and I played a lot of games under him, but I always felt he was going to build a new team with a new style.
“He arrived in October and in January I had a big offer from China. I remember he said, ‘Lucas, I cannot let you go because I only arrived and I need you. I cannot promise you’re going to play as much as you want, but I can promise you’re going to play a big part.’
“That’s why I always liked Jürgen—because he was always very honest. In another moment I had a very good opportunity but Jürgen said, ‘I still need you’ and he said, ‘Next year, if something good comes for you, I will help you out.’ That was the case.”
His eventual departure saw Lucas head to Lazio in Serie A, where he would play for five seasons while making 198 total appearances after his decade and 346 games for the Reds. In 2022, he returned to Gremio, his boyhood club, to close out his career.
“When Lazio came for me, I felt it was the right moment,” he added. “They were flying to Hong Kong in the afternoon and in the morning came that offer. He said, ‘Stay back, get everything done, don’t worry.’ It was emotional. I cried and he did a little as well.”
