Lewis Koumas stood in the bowels of Anfield with a man of the match award 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,” he said, grin fixed, eyes still wide from the night. Liverpool had just beaten Tottenham 3-1 in the Carabao Cup third round and Cody Gakpo had placed the award in his hands. “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.”
It mattered. You could see it in the way he spoke, in the way he lingered on the word “Liverpool”. This was a local lad shining for his boyhood club on a big Anfield night, and the emotion sat just beneath the surface.
A forward built for Iraola’s Liverpool
What also shone, for anyone with an eye on Andoni Iraola’s demands, was how perfectly Koumas fit the brief.
The Liverpool head coach had gone public before kick-off, sending a pointed message in the direction of more established, more expensive forwards after a flat draw with Fulham at the weekend. He wanted intensity. He wanted aggression. He wanted forwards who would run, harry and press until their legs emptied.
Koumas was not the target of that criticism. He became the answer to it.
Against Roberto De Zerbi’s Tottenham, the 20-year-old ran himself to a standstill. He chased lost causes, snapped into challenges, dragged defenders into places they did not want to go and opened lanes for team-mates to attack. His movement created space. 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.”
For a young forward trying to nail down a place in a new manager’s plans, there are few more valuable endorsements than that.
Koumas, who turns 21 on Saturday, accepted the praise with the same calm that marked his performance. No swagger, just a clear idea of what he wants to be.
“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 circuit to Anfield nights
Iraola’s faith did not arrive by accident. Within weeks of taking over in the summer, he told then sporting director Richard Hughes he wanted Koumas in the first-team squad. No more loans. No more waiting.
The Chester-born forward had already caught the eye on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. The surname helped turn heads – he is the son of former Tranmere Rovers and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas – but the work rate and intelligence kept the attention.
This season he has ticked off the milestones: first minutes in the Premier League, first taste of the Champions League, both as a substitute. Now a first man of the match award in senior football, delivered on a night when Iraola demanded a response from his frontline.
Could he have pictured 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.”
That line is not for effect. Koumas has had to fight for every step.
Capped 12 times by Wales, he has lived the quiet, unforgiving life of the loan player. 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 came the hard part: nothing. No further appearances for his boyhood club until Iraola walked through the door.
Instead, there was the circuit. Stoke City for the 2024-25 campaign. Birmingham City for the first half of 2025-26. Hull City for the second. Different managers, different systems, the same question every time: can you handle it?
“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” he insisted. Michael Owen and Gareth Bale were his early idols, but the drive came from closer to home. “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.”
A birthday, Bournemouth and a growing role
That hunger now meets opportunity. Koumas turns 21 on Saturday, the day before Liverpool travel to Bournemouth, the club where Iraola made his Premier League name. The timing is neat. The stakes are not.
Liverpool need forwards who fit their manager’s demands, who can press and probe and still have the composure to make the right decisions in the final third. Koumas has shown he can do that in flashes. Against Tottenham, he did it over 90 minutes.
He left the pitch with a trophy, a phone call, and a family still buzzing in a box high up in the Anfield stands. The bigger question now sits with Iraola.
On nights like this, with energy pouring out of him and the Kop roaring in approval, how long can Lewis Koumas be kept as just another option rather than a central part of Liverpool’s new attacking era?
