The first player to celebrate with Lewis Koumas in front of the travelling supporters in Linz was Liverpool‘s hat-trick hero in Bradley Barcola.
This time last season, Koumas was on loan at Birmingham in the Championship while Barcola was at Paris St-Germain, who went on to win the Champions League for the second season in a row.
Quite a chain of events led to the pair starting together for Liverpool in their 6-3 win over LASK.
And as Barcola left the Raiffeisen Arena with the match ball after a superb hat-trick, the Frenchman knew that he wasn’t the only player who put the ball in the net three times on Wednesday in Austria.
Koumas had his first two strikes ruled out for offside, but thankfully it was third time luck for the 21-year-old Wales international.
And so, just three days after making his first Premier League start against Manchester City – with Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Hugo Ekitike all injured – Koumas became the youngest Liverpool player to score and assist in a Champions League game.
Previously, the youngest to achieve the feat had been Steven Gerrard in 2001.
When that was put to him, Koumas wanted to know “Is that official?”.
“It’s not a bad stat, is it?” he said. “And it’s not a bad name to be alongside. Wow. What a legend. I just want more of this.”
He is enjoying his run in the first team but staying level-headed about it all, keen to point out: “This is my job.”
“I need to get goals and assists,” he said. “I hadn’t had any before Linz so it was really important to get them.”
In a Liverpool side where attention tends to be directed towards big-money names, Koumas provides a real feel-good story.
He joined Liverpool aged 11 and scored on his first-team debut as an 18-year-old under Jurgen Klopp.
After spells on loan at Stoke, Birmingham and Hull, where he helped the Tigers win promotion last season, Andoni Iraola decided in the first week of pre-season that Koumas was part of his Liverpool plans.
He made his Premier League debut at Newcastle before coming on against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. He was man of the match on his first start of the season against Tottenham in the Carabao Cup after an energetic performance which left Iraola describing his playing style as “contagious”.
That night, Koumas went straight on a video call with his family after the game and it was the case again in Austria after he scored his first goal of the season.
“It was probably the best feeling in my career, 100%. I’m just really grateful to have the opportunity again,” said Koumas.
“I would not have been a happy man [if I didn’t score], I would have been gutted. I just kept going because I knew the more the game was going on, it was opening up.
“Going over to the fans at the end meant absolutely everything. They are the reason we do this and that we want this job. I wish I could have got in there with them, but there was a big metal cage in the way!”