Remembering Maxi at Liverpool
So, Maxi Rodriguez at Liverpool. Yeah, I remember when we signed him. It was back when Rafa Benitez was still the boss, I think January 2010? It felt a bit like a typical Rafa signing, you know? Came in kinda under the radar, didn’t cost a fortune, maybe even for free or very little, I can’t quite recall the exact fee now. He came over from Atletico Madrid.
Honestly, at first, I didn’t really know what to expect. He wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire immediately. We had other stuff going on, the whole Hicks and Gillett ownership mess was dragging on, things were a bit gloomy. Maxi just seemed like another body in the squad for a while there. Decent player, obviously, you could see he had football intelligence, but didn’t make a massive splash straight away.
Then Kenny Dalglish came back in, took over from Roy Hodgson. Things started to feel a bit different around the club. And suddenly, Maxi just exploded. It was crazy. I remember watching the games towards the end of that 2010-11 season. He scored that hat-trick against Birmingham City at Anfield. We absolutely hammered them, 5-0 I think. And Maxi was just everywhere, popping up in the right place, finishing everything. Proper clever movement.
And then he did it again! Just a couple of weeks later, away at Fulham. Another hat-trick! It was unbelievable. Two hat-tricks in like, three games or something close to that. You just thought, where did this come from? He looked like a completely different player. Full of confidence.
He seemed to click really well with Luis Suarez, who’d arrived in the January window too, and Dirk Kuyt. They had this nice little understanding going on up front. Maxi wasn’t the fastest guy, never was, but his brain was sharp. He knew where the goal was, knew where to run. He wasn’t flashy, just effective. A really smart footballer.
- Scored crucial goals during that purple patch.
- Showed great timing with his runs into the box.
- Seemed like a genuinely liked guy in the squad.
He stayed for another season after that incredible scoring run. Still chipped in with goals, like that winner against Chelsea away, I remember that one. Always felt like a useful player to have around, even if he wasn’t always starting week in, week out.
Then he left in the summer of 2012, went back home to Argentina to play for Newell’s Old Boys, his boyhood club. Can’t blame him for that. It felt like a pretty quiet departure, really. No big fuss. But looking back, Maxi was a good servant for Liverpool. Maybe a bit underrated overall? For that short period under Kenny, though, he was absolutely brilliant. Those hat-tricks were something else. Good memories.
