Lewis Koumas Shines in Liverpool's Carabao Cup Victory

Lewis Koumas walked through the bowels of Anfield with a trophy in one hand and his phone in the other, and there was only one call he was ever going to make.

“That was my mum,” the Liverpool forward said, still glowing after being handed the man of the match award by Cody Gakpo following a 3-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Tottenham. “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.”

The emotion was obvious. So was something else.

What it takes to impress Andoni Iraola in this new Liverpool front line was written all over Koumas’s performance. The Basque coach had not been subtle before kick-off, calling out his forward line after a flat draw with Fulham and demanding more aggression, more pressing, more bite from his attackers. Big reputations were in his sights.

Koumas was never part of that criticism. He played as if he had taken it personally anyway.

For 90 minutes he ran himself into the turf against Roberto De Zerbi’s defence, harrying, chasing, dragging centre-backs into areas they did not want to go. He made space for others, opened lanes that had not been there, and refused to let Spurs breathe. It looked like a 20-year-old taking a message and turning it into a mission.

“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. He took the praise with the same calm he showed in the chaos of the press.

“I think how I play is ultimately the Liverpool way,” he said. “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.”

That trust arrived quickly. Within weeks of Iraola’s appointment in the summer, the new head coach told then sporting director Richard Hughes that Koumas was staying. No more loans. No more waiting in line somewhere else.

The Chester-born forward had caught the eye on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. The son of former Tranmere Rovers and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas, he has since ticked off his first Premier League and Champions League appearances as a substitute. Now he has a first senior man of the match award to go with them.

Could he have seen any of this coming when he reported for pre-season?

“No, I would have woken up!” he 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.”

That mindset has been forged the hard way. Koumas, capped 12 times by Wales, has had to wait longer than many of his peers to feel truly part of the first-team picture at his boyhood club. He can play through the middle or off the flank, but chances at Anfield were scarce.

Jürgen Klopp handed him his first Liverpool start more than two years ago and Koumas marked it with a goal in a 3-0 FA Cup fifth-round win over Southampton. Then the pathway closed. He did not feature again for Liverpool until Iraola walked through the door.

Instead, his education came on the road. The 2024-25 season at Stoke. The first half of 2025-26 at Birmingham. The second half at Hull. Three clubs, one objective.

“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” he said. Michael Owen and Gareth Bale were the posters on his childhood wall; the drive came from somewhere deeper. “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.”

On Wednesday night that hunger spilled out in every sprint, every press, every chase. It earned him a trophy to show his family and a manager’s trust reinforced in front of a full Anfield.

Now comes the real test. Not the one-off performance, but whether he can carry that same ferocity into Bournemouth, into the league grind, into the months when Liverpool’s season will be defined.