LIVERPOOL, England: The smile is back on Jurgen Klopp’s face — even if his Liverpool players seem intent on testing his nerves right to the end.

The Premier League title may be all but beyond the Merseyside club, but that doesn’t mean the drama is over for Klopp, who will step down at the end of the season.

Last week he was arguing on the sideline with Mohamed Salah as Liverpool effectively dropped out of the title race. And while Salah opened the scoring in a 4-2 win against Tottenham at Anfield on Sunday, it was Harvey Elliott who appeared to bring the broadest smile to Klopp’s face with a wonderful long-range goal in what looked like being a cakewalk for Klopp’s team.

“What a goal,” the Liverpool manager said. “In the game you only see it flying in and I thought, ‘That was a good shot.’ The goal I saw afterwards, there was not a lot of space left or right. It went exactly where it should be be. Top goal.”

Elliott’s strike, after goals from Salah, Andy Robertson and Cody Gakpo, fired Liverpool into a 4-0 lead before the game had even reached the hour mark. What followed was the unlikeliest of fightbacks from Spurs that might have made this another frustrating day in what has ultimately been a disappointing finale for Klopp at the end of nearly nine trophy-filled years.

Goals from Richarlison and Son Heung-min made it a much closer contest than it had ever looked like being. And it needed two outstanding saves from Alisson, a goal-line clearance from Joe Gomez and a VAR call to prevent it from being closer still.

“It’s a little bit of a mirror of the season. Really, really, really, good until we were really rubbish and then, we were okay again,” Klopp said.

A nervy finish didn’t stop the home fans from beckoning Klopp to produce his trademark post-match triple fist pump to the crowd after his penultimate home game in charge, with Feyenoord coach Arne Slot set to take over next season.

Mathematically, at least, it is not over for third-place Liverpool, who sit five points adrift of leader Arsenal with two games remaining. But, in reality, a late-season slump has killed Klopp’s hopes of walking away with a second Premier League crown of his reign.

His team had been heavily rebuilt over the past two seasons and was not expected to contend at the top so soon. But this season at one point offered Liverpool the hope of a quadruple of trophies. Now they feel like it is ending on an underwhelming note.

Still, Klopp, who delivered the English League Cup in February, will walk away from a team that is on the up and leave his successor with plenty of young talent to work with.

The 21-year-old Elliott is a prime example and he showcased his ample potential with an assist and a goal as Liverpool threatened to run riot.

His perfectly placed curling cross provided Gakpo with the simple task of heading in Liverpool’s third and then he swept an unstoppable shot from around 20 yards (meters) into the top corner and beyond Tottenham goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario.

“Harvey is exceptional. Still so young. So exceptional,” Klopp said. “In the midfield position, it was probably one of the top three performances from him today. The goal was exceptional. Everyone needs moments to gain more confidence. It was a good moment. That helps definitely.”

VILLA SLIPS

A bad week for Aston Villa got worse after a surprise 1-0 loss at Brighton.

Unai Emery’s team lost 4-2 at home to Olympiakos in the first leg of their Europa Conference League semifinal on Thursday. And on a day when it could have secured its place in next season’s Champions League, it suffered another setback when Joao Pedro headed home a rebound in the 87th after seeing his penalty saved by Robin Olsen.

Only Spurs’ loss at Anfield prevented it from being a bigger blow after the result at the Amex Stadium had given Ange Postecoglou’s team hope in its pursuit of Villa in fourth.

But Villa still missed out on the chance of making certain of a top-four finish.

CHELSEA ROUT WEST HAM

Chelsea’s troubled season could still end on something of a high after Mauricio Pochettino’s team boosted their chances of European soccer next season with a 5-0 rout of West Ham.

The win at Stamford Bridge moved Chelsea up to seventh in the standings and two points behind sixth-place Newcastle. Only the top six teams in the Premier League will be guaranteed a place in Europe next season.

“We need to keep this momentum and belief going,” Pochettino said.

While Chelsea’s exorbitant spending under US owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital was supposed to put the 2021 Champions League winner back in contention for the biggest prizes, qualification for Europe would represent progress after finishing in the bottom half of the table last year and another season of struggle this term.

After a morale-boosting 2-0 win against Tottenham on Thursday, Chelsea followed it up by thrashing West Ham.

Nicolas Jackson scored twice in the second half after Chelsea had raced to a 3-0 lead by the break through goals from Cole Palmer, Conor Gallagher and Noni Madueke.

ROME: Having fostered pragmatic relations with Brussels, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is for many the “moderate” face of Europe’s radical right — and is leading the charge for June elections.
The ascent to power of Meloni’s post-fascist, euroskeptic Brothers of Italy in 2022 sent shockwaves through the European Union, sparking fears of a lurch to the right within a founding member of both the bloc and NATO.
But her strong support for Ukraine has won Meloni friends in Washington and Brussels, particularly after she helped persuade Hungary’s Viktor Orban — a long-time ally sympathetic to Moscow — to drop his veto of EU aid to Kyiv.
Meloni has also worked closely with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, particularly on migration, a priority for the far-right premier.
“At a European level, she’s trying to present herself as a sort of moderate conservative and mediator” with the rest of the radical right, noted Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst at Rome’s LUISS University.
At home, Meloni has pursued a nationalist populist agenda focused on traditional family values, law and order, and migration, including a clampdown on rescue ships operating in the central Mediterranean.
It has raised hackles among the Italian left — particularly moves to exert influence over the RAI public state broadcaster — but nothing yet to spark alarm in Brussels, as with judicial reforms in Hungary and Poland.
Fiscal policy meanwhile has been relatively prudent, reflecting the constraints of being part of the EU’s single currency.
“She wants to be in many aspects the acceptable extreme for the rest of the European political establishment,” Castellani told AFP.
“She’s like the last island before the border.”

“More credible”

Meloni heads the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament, which includes Spain’s Vox, Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS), and France’s Reconquete!.
Marked by a pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO stance, it is viewed as more credible by the Brussels establishment than the other far-right grouping, the euroskeptic Identity and Democracy group (ID).
ID includes Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in France, Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD and Meloni’s own coalition ally, Matteo Salvini’s far-right League.
Rosa Balfour, director of the Carnegie Europe think tank, says both Rome and Brussels have benefited from a pragmatic working relationship.
“What the Commission has been doing is embrace Meloni and isolate Orban,” who is not part of either grouping, she told AFP.
“And that’s worked very well for Italy because Meloni has managed to extract concessions.”
This has mainly entailed EU support for the premier’s efforts to stop the tens of thousands of migrants who land on Italy’s shores each year on boats from North Africa.
Von der Leyen joined Meloni on the island of Lampedusa last year after a surge in arrivals, and the two women joined EU delegations to Egypt and Tunisia in recent months to agree new deals on energy and migration.

Building bridges

Analysts say the shift to a tougher EU approach on migration was well underway before Meloni arrived — but that has not stopped her claiming credit.
“We want Italy to be central to changing what doesn’t work in Europe,” she said during her election campaign launch last month.
She is standing in the vote — despite an EU rule barring government ministers from taking up their seats — and urged the European right to follow her example.
“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022,” she said.
But Castellani calls this a “bluff.”

“The real game she’s playing is trying to enter within the European game of alliances,” he said, notably building bridges between the ECR and Von der Leyen’s conservative European People’s Party (EPP).
The divisions in the European right are echoed within Meloni’s coalition, notably between her and Salvini — they share similar domestic priorities but differ on foreign affairs.
Salvini’s League has a history of warm ties with Moscow, while he never misses an opportunity to criticize Brussels.
But he has been eclipsed. The League came top in 2019 European elections in Italy with 34 percent, but is now polling closer to eight percent, compared to more than 27 percent for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

Fresh face, skilled communicator
Surveys show voters are supportive of Meloni’s foreign policy — and less so of her migration efforts — but Lorenzo Pregliasco, founder of polling company YouTrend, says personality plays a big role.
Meloni is also seen as “more credible” than other Italian leaders, a skilled communicator and a “genuine figure, someone who says what she thinks,” he told AFP.
He notes her 2022 victory was driven by her image as a fresh face, the only party leader who did not join Mario Draghi’s technocratic government.
With the opposition still divided, as they were back then, he predicts she could stay in power for the full five-year term.
But by then the political landscape may be very different, not least if Donald Trump wins the November US presidential election.
Balfour suggests Meloni may have to reposition herself.
If Trump wins, “then you’ve got all the political leaders elbowing each other to lead the right. And Orban has already positioned himself there.”