Lewis Koumas Shines in Liverpool's Carabao Cup Victory

Lewis Koumas walked through the bowels of Anfield with a man of the match award in one hand and his phone pressed to his ear with the other. Before the cameras, before the interviews, there was only one call that mattered.

“That was my mum,” the Liverpool forward said, still glowing from the 3-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Tottenham and the trophy Cody Gakpo had just handed 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.”

For a local lad playing for his boyhood club, the emotion was written all over his face. For Andoni Iraola, the significance lay in something else: the way Koumas had dragged Liverpool’s attack into life.

Iraola’s demand, Koumas’s answer

Iraola had been blunt before kick-off. Liverpool’s forwards, some of them big names and big fees, needed to press harder, run more, show more edge after a flat draw with Fulham on Saturday. He did not mention Koumas.

He didn’t need to.

Across 90 relentless minutes against Spurs, the 20-year-old did exactly what his manager had demanded from others. He harried Roberto De Zerbi’s defence, chased lost causes, opened lanes for teammates and worked himself into the ground.

“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, on the eve of Liverpool’s trip to Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. The praise could have gone to his head. It didn’t.

“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.”

From loan circuits to Anfield nights

Iraola’s faith was immediate. Within weeks of arriving in the summer, he told then sporting director Richard Hughes that he wanted Koumas with the first team, not shipped out on another loan.

The Chester-born forward had already made his case on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. The son of former Tranmere and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas, he turned that promise into real minutes this season, stepping off the bench in both the Premier League and Champions League before this first senior man of the match award.

Could he have seen this coming back in 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.”

For Wales, Koumas already has 12 caps. For Liverpool, the journey has been slower, more complicated. Jürgen Klopp gave him his first start more than two years ago and he marked it 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 senior side again until Iraola walked through the door. Instead, he went on a three-club tour of the Championship: Stoke in 2024-25, Birmingham for the first half of 2025-26, Hull for the second.

Each move could have chipped away at his belief. He insists it did the opposite.

“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” Koumas said. He namechecks Michael Owen and Gareth Bale as inspirations, players who broke through young and never stopped driving forward.

“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, with a trophy in his hand and his family on the other end of the line, that hunger finally had its Anfield stage. The question now is not whether Lewis Koumas belongs here.

It’s how far this energy, and this trust, can carry him in a Liverpool shirt.