Dreams✨

Idea Guy💡 Creative Strategist🎨
Media| Policy | Leadership | Faith & Purpose |
Building value and influencing culture, systems and nation building

[Diji @dijiaderogba]

~ Gabriel Afolayan? E good pieces! Toooooo good!

[Diji @dijiaderogba]

~ on wheel chair and baba still dey ACT! An actor’s ACTOR!

[𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐞 @Lfc_samie]

@QofAnfield Thiago Alcantara 😂

[Oreoluwa Awolowo 🖤 🚚 @NoraAwolowo]

One year ago today…
Red Circle released in cinema. And this experience has totally transformed my life.🤍 ⭕️

[Dreams✨ @dreams_dolapoo]

😂😭

[4121 @muzangdab_10]

Boys man😂 this friend of mine got married last weekend, he hasn’t posted anything about the wedding, not himself nor the bride, guess who just posted Iraola?😂😂

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

Our new head coach 📸

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach �Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach �Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach �Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach �Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach �Andoni Iraola has felt the ‘crazy’ power of Anfield as an opponent – and cannot wait to have it backing him as our head coach 💪

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

Head to All Red Video to watch the first part of Andoni Iraola's first interview as the new Reds head coach for free 🗣️

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

Welcome to the Reds, Andoni 👋

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

We can confirm Andoni Iraola has agreed a deal to become the club’s new head coach ahead of the 2026-27 season 🤝

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

"I want to become one more of you." ✊

[Liverpool FC @LFC]

...

[Suzanna Prophecy Daniel @suzannaprophecy]

One time, a campaign I ran went so well it almost broke the team.

We were two people on the marketing team at a small startup. We pushed out a content strategy, and overnight, it took off. Followers were coming in by the second, hundreds of DMs, and in the middle of it, I discovered we had zero infrastructure for that kind of wave.

I was leading marketing at the time, but I couldn't wake the other person on my team up because it was late, so I stayed up all night. Me, my phone, and a flood of messages that wouldn’t stop.

At some point I couldn't type fast enough to keep up, so I built a response template I could send to everyone that answered their questions and gave them a clear next step.

The whole time I kept thinking: if I go to sleep right now, these people might lose interest by morning. Attention like that doesn't wait for you to be ready. We needed to convert the attention while it was there.

That night taught me something I still carry. In marketing, we spend so much energy preparing for what happens if it doesn't land, the contingency plans, the mitigation strategies, the backup... but rarely do we prepare for what if it just goes well?

Plan for the wave too, because when it comes and you're not set up to ride, you may not get that window again.

[Dreams✨ @dreams_dolapoo]

@thegodkooper Saw it somewhere that it was his preference

[Doc AI @Doc_A_I]

One of the most intriguing aspects of the #LFC decision to move from Arne Slot to Andoni Iraola is this debate that has focused on quality. Was Slot good enough? Is Iraola better? Did Liverpool make the correct decision? Those are not interesting questions.

The interesting one is: what is the cost?

Football philosophies do not exist in a vacuum. Every approach carries an opportunity cost. Time. Money. Recruitment. Collective Buy-In. The best ideas can fail if the environment around them cannot sustain them. This is larger than Liverpool.

The Champions League final between Arsenal & PSG provided a glimpse into the future. PSG are often described as a ball dominant side, but that’s only half the story. Because what makes PSG exceptional isn’t what they do on the ball or how well they keep it, but what the team does when they lose it. Enrique himself has touched upon this. Once Mbappe left and the team began to get realigned with the right profiles in attack, the counter-press became a lightning rod for success. Compactness became more dominant. Their ability to attack small moments of instability in opposition defences transforms game-states.

In many ways, they are less a pure ball dominant team and more a modern interpretation of many pressing teams that came before them. And especially following the Champions League final, that has led folks to conclude that football is moving away from possession and back to counter-pressing football. Not the case.

Because PSG’s OOP superiority is still being created by their IP structure. Their structure on-the-ball forces ideal conditions for a successful counter-press. The spaces they attack are intentionally compact. The connections between the attackers are maintained. The rest defence stays solid. Players surround the ball in packs, so when the ball is lost? Win it back. But what happens is that people oscillate between two mindsets. Some remember the pressing, intensity and chaos. Others remember the long stretches of possession, spacing between players and passing patterns. The former exists primarily because of the latter. OOP still remains downstream of IP.

So it brings us back to Arne Slot.

Slot’s football is good. The ceiling of his in-possession model is extremely high. At its best, it produces control, territory, repeatable chance creation and sustained pressure. And like PSG, the IP structure will force conditions for counter-presses to emerge. It is what Slot did at Feyenoord, and also did to great effect at Liverpool in 24/25. It worked. And there is a reason many of Europe’s most progressive coaches have spent the last decade chasing variations of this idea. The challenge is the opportunity cost. To reach that ceiling, almost everything has to align. The squad has to be built in the right sequence. The profiles have to fit. The technical level has to remain exceptionally high. And the club has to remain patient while the final pieces arrive. Recruitment has to keep feeding the machine. Players have to not only be fit and sharp, but also available. These aren’t ideal conditions, but the system’s normal operating conditions. Slot and his staff do a tremendous amount of work alongside this, but it’s no easier.

Slot highlighted these costs this past season. High squad turnover. Time required for new players to bed in. Injuries impacting player availability. Disruption impacting preparation. A small squad having to repeatedly go again. Players having to play out of position to hold the system together. The Premier League being more focused on low blocks, set pieces and physicality. His alternative solutions having a ceiling. Needing transfers to complete the squad. In some ways, Arne Slot wrote his own thesis for a change.

PSG’s conditions are the opposite in so many ways. They have resources. They have patience. They have organisational alignment. Their domestic environment also allows them to refine behaviours that other clubs are forced to develop under far greater pressure. The dominant football philosophies in Ligue 1 do not consistently punish them for pursuing those ideas. They can spend months building fluency and collect the rewards in Europe, where the model has excelled. Liverpool and the Premier League do not have all of these conditions. So much is the opposite. And the cost to create them is too high. So a change is necessary to create conditions within acceptable cost parameters.

And now, for the present. Andoni Iraola.

Iraola’s football is good. The in-possession ceiling is probably lower. His teams are unlikely to dominate possession in the way Slot’s ideal side would. But the opportunity cost is dramatically lower. The squad profiles are easier to acquire. The model is more tolerant of imperfections. Success relies less on constructing the perfect machine and more on creating a collective capable of repeatedly winning moments. Importantly, this does not mean abandoning possession. It means managing the relationship between possession and pressing differently. An Arne Slot / Luis Enrique side looks to force counter-pressing conditions through technical superiority and positional control. Iraola looks to optimise them through athleticism, compactness, aggression and collective behaviours. Different routes. Similar destination. That doesn’t fully mean one approach is right and the other is wrong. Which is why this isn’t IP v OOP. Nor is it possession vs transitions.

Moreover, Europe and the Premier League are not asking exactly the same questions. Domestically, Liverpool face a league built around physicality, transitions, set pieces, athleticism and increasingly sophisticated low blocks. In Europe, the strongest teams are becoming specialists at exploiting space, attacking moments of instability and overwhelming opponents immediately after possession changes hands. The best sides still value possession, but increasingly as a tool rather than an objective. And it's no surprise why Liverpool looked far more comfortable in Europe, until they faced PSG.

I have to stress however, that Liverpool’s decision to change is not a reaction to the tactical meta or a sudden pivot from one extreme to the other. Slot’s ideal version of Liverpool would have contained balance too. More athleticism. More progression. More running power. More depth. The problem wasn’t necessarily the destination. It was the cost of the journey. Completing the squad required significant recruitment, significant patience and continued organisational commitment to a project that was only partially built. Liverpool appear to have looked at that road and concluded it was longer and more expensive than they were prepared to travel. And the most important factor - the dominant meta in the League - would simply not allow that direction.

That, however, does not remove the challenge that lies ahead. Iraola has never been a truly ball-dominant coach. His league record across the last three seasons reads 13 wins, 15 wins and 13 wins. That does not mean he cannot succeed at Liverpool. Equally, it does not mean success is inevitable. Managing Bournemouth and managing Liverpool are fundamentally different assignments. The challenge is no longer simply implementing a style of play. It is evident that Liverpool have chosen to pursue high-pressing, high-intensity football. The challenge is finding the balance between the demands of the Premier League, the demands of Europe and the expectations that come with competing for major honours every season. If Liverpool genuinely believe the current environment is more conducive to a model that leans slightly towards compactness, athleticism and counter-pressing rather than possession dominance, then the responsibility shifts to the club. They have to create a fertile environment for Andoni Iraola’s vision to succeed.

That means recruiting intelligently. Not just players, but coaches and support staff too. It means complete alignment between recruitment and the manager. It means insulating the dressing room from external noise. It means ensuring the squad is fully bought into the new direction. Most importantly, it means avoiding another strategic pivot three years from now. Every pivot resets timelines. Every pivot introduces friction. Every pivot delays progress. Liverpool cannot afford to keep bouncing between partially completed ideas. Football’s tactical landscape will continue to evolve. The principles required to build a successful football operation rarely do. Jurgen Klopp benefited from them. Arne Slot benefited from them during his title-winning season. Arne Slot in his second season, was greatly let down in this regard. Liverpool would do well to remember that and recalibrate. Fix yesterday's mistakes today.

And once that is all said and done? We will see whether their decision is justified in the long run. But it brings us back to where we started. Every football idea carries a cost. The clubs that best understand those costs, and remain aligned around the most sustainable path forward, will be the ones who shape what comes next. Over to you, #LFC.

[Oluwadamilola ❤️👑 @Dammie_lfc]

Dear Slot sexuals, If Iraola comes in and doesn’t kickstart immediately, we will say he inherited a shit team from Slot and therefore needs time! If his team performs greatly, we will drag Slot’s ass for being shit!

Jokes on you if you think we will turn on our new manager 😂😂

[Grove Kifasi ✟ @GroveRKifasi]

everybody’s tryna make it out…..

[Vision @Lfc__Vision]

This is the best trophy lift of all time