Lewis Koumas Shines in Liverpool's Carabao Cup Victory

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

“That was my mum,” the Liverpool forward said, grin fixed, eyes still bright from the night. Moments earlier, Cody Gakpo had handed him the man of the match award after a 3-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Tottenham. Now he was showing it off down the line.

“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 Koumas, this wasn’t just a breakout performance. It was a night when the kid who grew up dreaming of Liverpool showed exactly what it means to play for the club he calls home.

Iraola’s demands, Koumas’s response

Andoni Iraola had not been subtle in the build-up. Still irritated by a flat draw with Fulham at the weekend, the Liverpool head coach had thrown down a very public challenge to his forwards. He wanted aggression. He wanted pressing. He wanted more.

Koumas was not the target of those words. He heard them anyway.

Against Spurs, the 20-year-old ran himself into the ground. He harried, chased, and snapped at Roberto De Zerbi’s defence, dragging centre-backs into places they did not want to go and opening lanes for others to attack. His movement stretched Tottenham; his work without the ball set the tone.

“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 head 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, matter-of-fact. “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 circuit to Anfield nights

Iraola’s faith in the Chester-born forward arrived quickly. Within weeks of taking the job in the summer, he told then sporting director Richard Hughes that Koumas was staying put. No more loans. First-team squad or nothing.

Koumas had already caught the eye on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. The son of former Tranmere and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas, he had been on the fringes for long enough to know how rare these chances can be. This season he has stepped off the bench in both the Premier League and the Champions League. Now he has a first senior man of the match award to go with it.

Could he have imagined this back in July?

“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.”

The Wales international, capped 12 times, has had to grind for this moment. Jürgen Klopp handed him his first Liverpool start more than two years ago, and Koumas 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 again until Iraola walked through the entrance at Anfield. Instead, he learned the hard way: a season on loan at Stoke in 2024-25, the first half of 2025-26 at Birmingham, the second half at Hull. Different cities, different systems, same 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 wall; Liverpool was always the target. “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 family in the stands and a trophy in his hand, that hunger was written all over his performance. The question now is not whether Lewis Koumas belongs at this level.

It’s how far, and how fast, he can push Liverpool’s attack from here.