Remember the Liverpool Parade? Here’s Why It Still Matters in 2026

Cast your mind back. It was Bank Holiday Monday, the 26th of May 2025, and Liverpool were parading through their own city on an open-top bus with the Premier League trophy. Nearly a million people lined the streets. Flags everywhere. Scarves in the air. The kind of scenes that remind you why you fell in love with this game in the first place.

It happened because Arne Slot, in just his first season as Liverpool manager, had done something that many thought would take years — he had won the title. And not just scraped it. Liverpool clinched the 2024–25 Premier League with a 5-1 demolition of Tottenham, finishing the campaign with a swagger that felt like a statement of intent. It was the club’s 20th top-flight title, and their first since the Klopp era. The city had been waiting for this moment, and when it came, it came properly.

For those of us following from Ireland, it was the kind of morning where you were checking your phone before the alarm went off. A survey by The Irish Times has shown that 29% of Irish adults support Liverpool — a figure that surprises no one who has ever walked into a pub on a Saturday afternoon in Dublin, Limerick, Cork or Galway.

That connection runs deep, and it is well understood by every Irish bookmaker worth their salt, Paddy Power among them. The 15-kilometre parade route was packed with Irish accents, Irish flags, and Irish hearts that had been waiting for this day just as long as any Scouser.

Joy, Then Silence

The parade itself was a celebration of a genuinely brilliant season. Slot had transformed Liverpool’s playing style without dismantling what Klopp had built. The squad pressed with intelligence, defended with structure, and produced some of the most fluid football seen at Anfield in years.

Mohamed Salah was extraordinary. Trent Alexander-Arnold, despite the constant noise about his future, performed at the highest level right through to the end. The title was deserved, and the parade was the proper send-off it deserved.

But the summer that followed was one of the most difficult in the club’s recent history — and it reshaped everything that came after.

On the 3rd of July 2025, Diogo Jota and his brother André were killed in a car accident in Spain. Jota was 28 years old, a player at the absolute peak of his powers, and one of the most popular figures in the dressing room. The club retired the number 20 shirt across all levels in his memory. For Irish supporters, the loss hit particularly hard — Jota had been a favourite, a player who gave everything every time he pulled on the red shirt. The grief that settled over Anfield in pre-season was real, and it coloured the entire campaign that followed.

Then came the summer transfer window. Alexander-Arnold left for Real Madrid. Luis Díaz departed. Liverpool brought in Alexander Isak from Newcastle for a British record fee of £125 million, a statement signing that generated enormous excitement. But rebuilding a title-winning squad in a single window, while carrying the weight of Jota’s loss, was always going to be a challenge.

Ireland’s Thread to Liverpool

For Irish supporters, the 2025–26 season has been a test of loyalty in the truest sense. The team that paraded through Liverpool in May is barely recognisable now. New faces, a different shape, and a league table that currently shows the Reds in sixth place, 16 points behind leaders Arsenal. The title defence is long over.

What has made it harder is the loss of Conor Bradley. The lad from Castlederg in County Tyrone had become the heartbeat of the Irish connection to this Liverpool squad. His performances in 2024–25 were the reason he was being spoken about as one of the best right-backs in Europe.

In January 2026, he suffered serious bone and ligament damage in his knee during the 0-0 draw at Arsenal and was ruled out for the rest of the season. For Irish fans, it felt like the last thread to the club snapping. His surgery went well and he has promised he will be back stronger — but watching this season without him has been difficult.

Caoimhín Kelleher, who had been Liverpool’s reliable second goalkeeper for years, left for Brentford in the summer. The Irish presence in the squad has never felt thinner. And yet the connection between this island and that club remains as strong as it has ever been. It is not built on squad composition. It is built on something older than any individual player.

What That Parade Started

Here is the thing about winning a title. It does not just give you a parade. It gives you expectations, it gives you pressure, and it gives you a Champions League campaign the following season. Liverpool entered the 2025–26 UEFA Champions League as Premier League champions, and they have reached the round of 16 – an achievement in a competition that has grown more brutal with every passing year.

The domestic season may have disappointed, but the Champions League remains alive. If Liverpool can find the form that won them the title 12 months ago, a deep run in Europe is not out of the question. Slot has shown he knows how to manage a squad through a long season. The question is whether this particular squad, reshaped and still grieving, has enough left to produce something memorable in the knockout rounds.

Meanwhile, for Irish supporters, there is another football story running in parallel that feels every bit as significant. On the 26th of March, the Republic of Ireland face the Czech Republic in Prague in a World Cup playoff semi-final. Win that, and there is a final five days later. Win both, and Ireland are at the World Cup in North America for the first time since 2002. They beat beat Portugal 2-0 in November, and the dream is alive in a way it has not been for a very long time.

The parade of May 2025 was the high point of a remarkable year for Liverpool Football Club. What followed — the grief, the rebuilding, the difficult season — has only made that day feel more precious in hindsight. Football does that. It gives you a moment of pure joy, and then it asks you to carry it through everything that comes next.

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