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, making the call that mattered most. Before the interviews, before the replays, he dialled home.

“That was my mum,” the Liverpool forward said, still glowing after the 3-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Tottenham. “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 deeper than a tidy performance under the lights. This was a local lad shining for his boyhood club, and everyone inside Anfield could feel it.

Iraola’s demand, Koumas’s answer

Andoni Iraola had set the tone days earlier. Frustrated by a flat attacking display in the draw with Fulham, Liverpool’s head coach publicly demanded sharper pressing and greater bite from his forwards, a pointed message in the direction of bigger names and bigger salaries.

Koumas was not really part of that conversation. By full-time against Spurs, he had become the embodiment of it.

The 20-year-old ran himself into the ground against Roberto De Zerbi’s side, harrying defenders, dragging them into places they did not want to go, creating lanes and chances for others. His work without the ball framed Liverpool’s performance as much as anything that happened on it.

“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 travel to Iraola’s former club Bournemouth. He took the praise with the same calm, focused demeanour he shows on the pitch.

“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 nights

Iraola’s faith arrived quickly. Within weeks of his appointment in the summer, he told then sporting director Richard Hughes that he wanted Koumas kept at Liverpool, not sent out for another loan.

The Chester-born forward had impressed on the club’s pre-season tour of the US. That form earned him substitute appearances in both the Premier League and Champions League, and now his first senior man of the match award in a Liverpool shirt.

For a player who has had to wait his turn, the trajectory has been sharp. Koumas, capped 12 times by Wales, made his first Liverpool start under Jürgen Klopp more than two years ago, scoring on his full debut in a 3-0 FA Cup fifth-round win over Southampton. Then the door closed.

He did not feature again for his boyhood club until Iraola arrived. Instead, he learned his trade away from the spotlight: a season on loan at Stoke in 2024-25, followed by the first half of 2025-26 at Birmingham and the second half at Hull. Hard miles, hard lessons.

“I never showed a weak mentality about how the future would look for me at Liverpool,” he insisted. He namechecks Michael Owen and Gareth Bale as the players he watched growing up, the standards he measured himself against.

“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.”

Dreaming, then doing

Asked whether he could have imagined this back at the start of pre-season, Koumas laughed.

“No, I would have woken up! 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 edge – the sense that every appearance might be his last – is exactly what Iraola has been trying to inject into Liverpool’s forward line. Koumas plays like a man who understands that nothing is guaranteed.

He is also a man who understands where he is. Son of former Tranmere Rovers and West Bromwich Albion playmaker Jason Koumas, he has grown up around the professional game, but he talks like a supporter who never quite believes his luck when he pulls on the shirt.

The result against Spurs will fade into the long list of Liverpool cup nights at Anfield. For Koumas, though, this felt like a marker. A night when a coach’s public challenge met a young forward’s private obsession.

The next test comes quickly: a trip to Bournemouth, a return to Iraola’s old home and a different kind of scrutiny. If Koumas keeps running, pressing and playing with this kind of purpose, the question will not be whether he stays in the squad.

It will be who he keeps out of the team.