There is a reason so much of Liverpool’s season seems to keep circling back to Dominik Szoboszlai. It is not just that the Hungarian has become one of the few players in Arne Slot’s side who looks capable of changing the mood of a game with one swing of his right foot — it is that Liverpool, more often than not, have looked like a team waiting for exactly that sort of intervention.
A free-kick against Tottenham. A set-piece routine finished off against Galatasaray. A long-range strike against Manchester City. A moment against Arsenal that felt as if it came from nowhere and yet somehow came to define the whole game. Szoboszlai has become Liverpool’s emergency exit, their shortcut through difficult moments, and while that says plenty about his quality, it also says something less flattering about his team.
The numbers tell part of the story. Liverpool are fifth in the Premier League on 49 points, having scored 49 goals and conceded 40 in 30 matches. This is a long way from the kind of dominance associated with a team that want to control matches rather than survive them. In Europe, the picture is brighter on the surface — Liverpool have scored 24 goals and conceded only nine in 10 Champions League matches, progressing to the quarter-finals after brushing aside Galatasaray 4-0 at Anfield. But even that victory felt as much like a reminder of what this team can be, compared to what it consistently is.
That is where Szoboszlai comes in with 11 goals and eight assists in all competitions on March 13, and he then added another goal in the win over Galatasaray five days later. UEFA’s Champions League stats show five goals and four assists in 10 matches in the competition alone, which underlines just how often he has been at the centre of Liverpool’s most decisive work this season. Szoboszlai has been one of the few Liverpool players this season to combine intensity, reliability, and end product. He presses, he covers ground, he plays through discomfort and, crucially, he looks willing to take responsibility when others go quiet.
The problem for Slot is that responsibility has begun to drift too heavily onto individuals. Liverpool’s attacking process has too often lacked the clarity that used to define the best versions of this team. They are not protecting leads well enough, specifically after the Tottenham draw, Liverpool have conceded 15 goals this season after the 75th minute. That is not just bad luck. That is a team failing to impose itself for long enough stretches.
Perhaps the most telling number of all is that, in the league, Liverpool have not lost any of the 12 matches in which they scored first, winning 10 and drawing two. That should sound reassuring, but it also hints at a side that still depends too much on good moments and positive momentum. When games remain messy, tense or tactically clogged, too much of the burden falls on someone producing a strike from distance or a set-piece of genuine quality. Increasingly, that someone is Szoboszlai.
Slot himself has already acknowledged part of the issue. In October, he said one of the ways teams unlock low blocks is through set-pieces and admitted Liverpool had not done that well enough this season. The irony now is that Szoboszlai’s delivery and shooting have almost become the exception that saves Liverpool from that wider failing.
That is why Liverpool’s dependence on brilliance matters. Elite players are supposed to decide top-level football matches — Salah has done so for years, and Szoboszlai is doing it now with increasing regularity. But the healthiest teams do not need wonder-strikes to make basic attacking sense. The healthiest teams do not spend so many afternoons looking blunt until one gifted footballer bails them out.
There have been enough examples this season to make the pattern difficult to ignore. Szoboszlai’s free-kick beat Arsenal in August. He scored another stunning one against Manchester City in February, even in defeat. He rescued a point of sorts against Tottenham with another dead-ball goal. He then set Liverpool on their way against Galatasaray in the Champions League with the opening goal in the tie-turning 4-0 win. These are not isolated highlights anymore, they are becoming a recurring pattern of survival.
And yet the answer is not to ask less of Szoboszlai, it is to ask more of Liverpool. More control. More consistency. More contribution from the collective so that his goals feel like a bonus rather than a necessity. Because when one midfielder’s brilliance starts to feel like the cleanest solution to every difficult question, that is usually a sign the team has stopped coming up with enough answers of its own.
Szoboszlai deserves all the praise coming his way. On form and on influence, he has been one of Liverpool’s best players this season. But if Liverpool are serious about finishing this season high in the league and making their Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain count, they need to become less dependent on the Hungarian and more recognisable as a team again. At the moment, too many of their best moments still begin with the same idea: keep calm and let Szoboszlai take over.