Yards away on the touchline, Martínez stood ashen-faced, hands on his hips, staring at a fixed point in the middle distance that had nothing particular about it.
His head dropped slowly, by degrees, until his chin was nearly at his chest. 4–0.
There was no path back from 4–0 with twenty minutes remaining. The question of whether they could score four in twenty minutes was a question whose answer was too obvious to require saying aloud.
What occupied his mind instead was the harder question—the one that would still be there at full-time, and tomorrow, and in the days of analysis that followed: how do you stop a player like that?
He had put his best thinking into that problem all week, and the scoreboard had offered its verdict on his solution.
On the same touchline, Klopp turned to his assistant and laughed. He clapped him on the shoulder and pointed toward Julien on the pitch, shaking his head with pure, unrestrained pride like saying: can you believe what we are watching?
His assistant shook his head back, wearing the same expression.
Two managers stood yards apart on the same touchline—one consumed by celebration, pointing at his player and shaking his head with unrestrained pride; the other motionless and hollow, absorbing the full weight of being taken apart at home.
The contrast between them was the visual summary of the entire afternoon.
Across Liverpool—in the main square in front of the public screens, in living rooms draped in red flags and replica shirts—there was eruption.
People who had been sitting leapt to their feet.
"Four–nil! FOUR–NIL!"
In the Boot Room, a fan in a retro Liverpool shirt was screaming to hoarse at the bar, his voice was already gone. "We're battering them in their own stadium! We've completely broken them! This is everything!"
Around him, people jumped and embraced and hollered at the ceiling living inside the feeling.
"JULIEN! LIVERPOOL!"
"How long has it been since we beat Everton like this?!" A voice from somewhere in the middle of the room, carrying a disbelieving tone. "Four–nil at Goodison! That kid has given us the world!"
Ted had been restless for the last hour, moving between the bar and the television too charged to stay still. Now he stopped.
He stood at the nearest table, looked around the room at all the faces he knew—the regulars, the strangers who had become temporary brothers across the course of an afternoon and slammed his palm flat on the surface hard enough to make every glass jump.
"Right—everyone up!" He waited until the noise dipped just enough to hear him. "For Julien! For Luis! For four-bloody-nil! CHEERS!"
The whole pub erupted as one.
Every face wore the same pure joy in the electric thrill of watching your bitter rivals utterly dismantled on their own home ground.
"CHEERS!"
The match continued, and the pub stayed riveted to the screen through the closing stages.
Then the 80th minute arrived, and the whole room seemed to hold its breath at once then turned ugly.
On screen: a heavy collision occurred in midfield.
McCarthy came charging from the side and both men went down hard, the impact was absorbed into the turf in a way that made everyone watching wince.
"Christ—is Julien alright?!"
The celebration drained out of the pub in an instant. Every face turned to the screen, leaning forward, needing to know.
The camera zoomed in.
Julien was on the turf, gripping his knee, his face was creased with expression of real pain.
McCarthy lay completely still nearby, hands wrapped around his ankle, his face was chalk-white.
After thirty seconds or so—thirty seconds during which the pub was quieter than it had been at any point in the last ninety minutes, Julien pressed himself up from the grass with both hands and tested the leg.
He put weight on it. He walked a few steps, shaking it out cautiously, reading what his body was reporting back.
It held.
The pub let out a collective breath that was so audible and so simultaneous that several people laughed at themselves for making it.
"Thank God. Nearly gave me a heart attack."
McCarthy, meanwhile, was being stretchered from the field—clearly unable to continue, his afternoon was finished. Everton scrambled to use their final substitution.
The camera swept back to Julien, and found Gerrard beside him—having walked over quietly, without urgency, and rested a hand on his shoulder.
They stood together for a moment. Gerrard's expression was complicated in a way that was interesting to look at—knowing, perhaps, something about what had just unfolded, but saying nothing out loud. His hand on Julien's shoulder said enough.
Julien looked back at him and smiled.
If no one can prove it, it isn't revenge.
Five minutes later, Klopp made his call. Julien's number came off.
Julien walked to the touchline, turned to face the Liverpool away end, and gave a single wave. Every Liverpool fan in the ground rose to their feet. The chant came again, one last time, warm and grateful:
"Julien! Julien!"
The Boot Room did the same. People stood at their tables, raising their glasses, singing.
"Perfect performance," someone said. "He can walk off that pitch with his head held as high as it goes."
Martin Tyler's voice drifted from the television:
"Well—that about settles it. Four–nil. Liverpool are in complete control, and there is simply no way back for Everton from here. Their players gave everything today—after Deulofeu came on they had real intent and caused Liverpool real problems in those middle stages of the second half. But the legs are gone now. You can see it in every stride."
The same problem that haunted them last season remains: no cutting edge up front. Barkley's shot that flew over the bar was almost certainly their clearest attempt all afternoon—and it went over the bar.
More damaging still, their defense—the thing they pride themselves on, the organized, compact defensive structure that Martínez has spent four months building—has completely fallen apart today. Against the movement of De Rocca, Suárez, and Sturridge, the back line lost all shape and all composure.
That, more than anything else, is why the scoreline looks like this."
He gave a pause, and then added. "Liverpool's attacking football today has been extraordinary—and Julien De Rocca, above all, has been the difference. Four goal involvements. Two goals, two assists, in an away derby. He has not just played in this match. He has taken it apart."
The clock reached ninety. Everton's movement had become mechanical and spiritless. The rare counter-attack that emerged died before it reached the final third, extinguished by a Liverpool press that remained organized even now.
Liverpool were composed and leisurely now, recycling possession with calm patience having already decided the outcome.
Tweet!!
Referee Oliver raised the whistle to his lips and blew the full-time signal.
4–0.
Liverpool had gone to Goodison Park for the 221st Merseyside Derby and come back with a statement—about a demolition, complete, utter victory over Everton.
The scoreboard said everything that needed saying, and the players on the pitch seemed to know it. There were no over-the-top drama, no sprint toward the away end in celebration, no gestures aimed at the Everton fans who were already moving toward the exits in ones and twos, heads down, scarves tucked back around their necks.
The red shirts on the pitch found each other with handshakes, embraces, quiet laughter.
The Everton players moved among them in the opposite emotional register—some shaking hands mechanically, completing the ritual; others standing briefly still on the pitch before finding the strength to walk toward the tunnel.
Goodison Park had not seen a home derby defeat like this in a long time, and the full weight of that was only now beginning to arrive.
The substitutes streamed in from the touchline, and soon the entire Liverpool squad had gathered in a huddle of slapping hands and wrapped arms in the center of the Goodison pitch.
Klopp was in the middle of it, as he always was, finding each face in turn, gripping a shoulder here, saying something specific there.
In the post-match interview, Klopp sat forward in his chair and let the feeling be visible on his face, making no attempt to moderate it into something more professionally neutral. He had never been that kind of manager, and he was not about to become one tonight.
"This match was something beautiful," he said, and the word 'beautiful' arrived with particular weight. "This is the most excited I have felt since I came to Liverpool—tonight is a night I want to remember forever."
He leaned forward slightly, his hands were moving as he spoke.
"My players were exceptional. In attack and in defense, they showed top-level quality at every moment. We came here to a hostile ground, into a fierce and physical game—a game that tried to become a war—and we didn't flinch. We answered with football.
That is what I ask of them. That is what they gave me."
He looked directly at the press. "What Julien did tonight was beyond description. Suárez, Gerrard, every single one of them also gave absolutely everything. But Julien—" He shook his head, smiling.
"This is not only a victory. It is proof of what we are building—tactically, as a group, as a culture. Winning 4–0 at Goodison Park gives this team something enormous. It tells us we are on the right road."
The media arrived at their conclusions quickly, and the conclusions were unanimous in their direction if not their vocabulary.
The Liverpool Echo led: "Goodison Park tonight witnessed the coronation of a superstar. Nineteen-year-old Liverpool striker Julien De Rocca, with two goals and two assists in a dominant display, led the Reds to a 4–0 demolition of Everton.
His record this season across twelve league games—21 goals, 9 assists—shatters all previous Premier League records for this stage of a campaign. By any measure, he is the best player in England's top flight this season."
The Times sports editor Mark Lawrenson wrote in his post-match column:
"He is not a talent. He is a phenomenon. De Rocca's pace, technique, finishing, and reading of the game exist in a balance, at nineteen years old, that most players spend their entire careers chasing and never reach. Against Everton's compact defense and targeted marking—a defensive plan built specifically around containing him, he scored a free-kick, broke the lines for himself, and made goals for teammates. That kind of complete performance, across all the different dimensions of the game, has not been seen in this league for a decade."
Club legend Jamie Carragher was direct on his post-match television appearance:
"This is the most exciting Liverpool side in five years. Klopp has unlocked Julien—that is the story, and it is the only story. He has taken him from a wide attacker and rebuilt him as a central free-roaming forward, with Suárez alongside him as a dual axis, and the results have been extraordinary.
More than just results—the identity of this team has changed. Twelve games in, they are right at the top, scoring freely and defending with organization. Keep this up, and Liverpool can genuinely challenge for the title."
Sky Sports offered its own version of the same assessment: "De Rocca's performance tonight has gone beyond his age. He is redefining what this era of the Premier League looks like."
The Mirror was the least restrained, and perhaps the most honest about where the conversation was already heading: "Twelve games, twenty-one goals. Julien has made the Golden Boot a formality. His next target might just be the Ballon d'Or."
Social media, fan forums, television panels, radio phone-ins—everywhere, the same name, the same conversation, repeating itself in every format available.
Tonight, all of Liverpool burned red.
And it burned for Julien.
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