Lewis Koumas Shines in Liverpool's Carabao Cup Victory
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 he knew exactly who to call.
“That was my mum,” the Liverpool forward said, still grinning as he came off the high of a 3-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Tottenham. Cody Gakpo had just handed him the trophy. Koumas wanted to share it. “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 meant something more than just a cup tie and a personal accolade. This was a local lad shining for his boyhood club, in front of his family, on a night when Liverpool needed a response.
Iraola’s message, Koumas’s answer
Andoni Iraola had not been shy before kick-off. After a flat draw with Fulham at the weekend, the Liverpool head coach publicly demanded sharper pressing and more tenacity from his forwards, a pointed reminder to some of his more decorated, expensive attackers.
Koumas was never named in that conversation. He didn’t need to be.
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 uncomfortable areas and opening lanes for team-mates to exploit. The numbers won’t fully show it, but the pattern of the game did: 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, on the eve of Liverpool’s trip to Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. Compliments from his manager could easily have sent him drifting into cliché. Instead, he stayed rooted in the identity he believes defines both him and his club.
“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 lights
Iraola’s faith did not start with this tie. Within weeks of arriving in the summer, he told then sporting director Richard Hughes that he wanted Koumas in his first-team squad. No more loans. No more drifting around the Championship.
The Chester-born forward had already impressed on Liverpool’s pre-season tour of the US. The son of former Tranmere Rovers and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas, he has been edging closer all year: cameos in the Premier League, minutes in the Champions League, and now a first senior man of the match award.
Could he have imagined this back at the start of 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.”
His route has been anything but straightforward. Koumas, capped 12 times by Wales, had to wait for his breakthrough at club level. Jürgen Klopp handed him his first Liverpool start more than two years ago, and he marked that full debut with a goal in a 3-0 FA Cup fifth-round win over Southampton. Then the door shut again.
He did not play for Liverpool’s first team again until Iraola walked through the door.
The club sent him to Stoke for the 2024-25 season, then to Birmingham for the first half of 2025-26, and Hull for the second. It was the classic young-forward education: different systems, different pressures, no guarantees.
“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” Koumas said. Michael Owen and Gareth Bale were the posters on his wall growing up; the ambition they represented never really dimmed. “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 phone, that hunger finally had a stage worthy of it. The question now is not whether Lewis Koumas belongs at this level, but how far this kind of relentless, “Liverpool way” performance can take him in a side Iraola is trying to reshape.
