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Originally published in The Squall’s “Sliding Doors” issue.

It was all over. As the Westfalenstadion exploded into rapture — as Marcel Schmelzer’s unlikely low drive from outside the box lay in the back of the net — it seemed certain that Hoffenheim were going down.

The Dieter Hopp-financed transformation of the former amateur club, based in the village of 3,000 people in southwest Germany, was about to take a devastating step backward. Having risen into the professional ranks and attained Bundesliga status in 2008, Hoffenheim went to Dortmund on the final day of the 2012-13 season needing a win if they hoped to stay in the first division. Even then, goal difference meant that Fortuna Düsseldorf and Augsburg above them almost certainly had to lose their respective matches if Hoffenheim were to claw their way into the relegation playoff.

In their way stood Jürgen Klopp’s powerhouse, a team one week from the European Cup final. Dortmund may have failed to claim a third consecutive Bundesliga, but they had become the actualisation of Klopp’s vision for his team. The result versus Hoffenheim was practically meaningless for Dortmund; drastically more important was their condition and rhythm going into the final against Bayern.

Hoffenheim appeared doomed as early as the sixth minute, when Robert Lewandowski tapped Dortmund into the lead with his 24th league goal of the season. From there, Dortmund had several opportunities to finish off their opponents for good. In the first half, Jakub Błaszczykowski beat five men only to sidefoot the finish into Koen Casteels’s arms; in the second, İlkay Gündoğan unleashed a curling effort from 25 yards that Casteels just managed to tip off the crossbar.

Yet Hoffenheim managed to stay alive. Their reward was a Dortmund meltdown that began in the 76th minute, when Mats Hummels clumsily fouled Kevin Volland in the penalty area. Four minutes later, Hoffenheim’s young Brazilian forward Roberto Firmino played a perfectly measured through-ball that released Sven Schipplock. Roman Weidenfeller rushed off his line and took Schipplock out, conceding another penalty and getting himself sent off in the process. (As Dortmund had no more subs, Kevin Großkreutz finished the match in goal.)

Sejad Salihović slotted in his second penalty to make it 2-1 to the visitors, and results elsewhere were going Hoffenheim’s way. But in the 93rd minute, Dortmund launched a free-kick up the pitch that penned Hoffenheim around their own box. The ball found its way to Schmelzer, who had just enough time to hit a drive from nearly 30 yards out. The shot dribbled past two walls of players, just missed Lewandowski’s outstretched foot and rolled past Casteels into the bottom corner.

Pandemonium ensued. Several Hoffenheim players sank to the ground in anguish, while those in yellow surrounding them celebrated wildly. But Casteels and others ran to linesman Benjamin Brand, and before long they were joined by referee Jochen Drees. After briefly conferring with Brand, Drees jogged over to the Hoffenheim penalty area, his arm raised. The call, rightly, was offside against Lewandowski; the goal was disallowed.

On the touchline, Klopp was apoplectic. He traded words with his counterpart Markus Gisdol, who reciprocated with a light shove. At the final whistle, when it was clear that Hoffenheim had survived one of the most extraordinary afternoons in the Bundesliga’s recent history, an animated Klopp made a beeline for Drees and his assistants to voice his complaints. Hoffenheim would go on to make easy work of Kaiserslautern in the relegation playoff, preserving their place in the Bundesliga, where they remain today.

In an interview for a Bundesliga-produced TV series, Klopp recalled the game against Hoffenheim. It’s both funny and striking how — though he readily admits the offside call was correct — part of him clearly remains annoyed at an ultimately irrelevant result for his side. “Düsseldorf got relegated because we lost that match,” he said. “I haven’t got any close ties to Düsseldorf, but it was all very unnecessary.”

It’s the sort of hyper-competitive attitude that epitomises Klopp’s celebrated drive and intensity as a coach. And it’s all the more amusing because, had things ended any other way — had Schmelzer’s goal stood, had Dortmund converted any of their missed opportunities and dashed any chance of a Hoffenheim fightback — Klopp’s time at Liverpool might look very different. Because by relegating Roberto Firmino’s Hoffenheim, Klopp would have almost surely condemned himself to a future without Roberto Firmino. And that’s a universe in which no Liverpool supporter, let alone Klopp himself, would want to live.

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In the hysterically hyped world of Brazilian football, where vaunted teenage prodigies are often whisked away to Europe in deals worth millions, Roberto Firmino Barbosa de Oliveira emerged from relative obscurity. This lends an almost mythic quality to his evolution into one of the world’s most highly-regarded footballers — a player lauded as much, if not more so, for his intelligence and commitment as his technique, creativity and ruthlessness.

How did this unheralded young man from Alagoas become a player of seemingly one-of-a-kind qualities, a linchpin of one of this century’s greatest sides? He parlayed his time in the youth ranks at his low-flying hometown club, CRB, into a move to the larger southern club Figueirense, which he helped promote to the Brazilian Serie A in 2010. Almost immediately Hoffenheim snapped him up, part of a recruitment strategy that lured Brazilians like Luiz Gustavo (who was out the door to Bayern just as Firmino arrived) and, later, Joelinton to the club.

By the time Hoffenheim went to Dortmund in May 2013, Firmino had become an everpresent in the team, usually supporting an inept hodgepodge of strikers up top. What the 21 year old lacked in final product — he had only five goals and two assists in 29 league starts that year — he made up with the work rate and link-up play that have since become trademarks. Those traits were burnished at a club still heavily influenced by the management of Ralf Rangnick, who had departed two years earlier. Still, Hoffenheim struggled terribly in 2012-13, sacking two managers and having the worst defensive record in the league to show for it.

At the Westfalenstadion that day, Firmino played Salihović through on goal in the first half, only for the finish to be hit straight at Weidenfeller. Of course, his most impressive contribution was the even better through-ball to Schipplock in the 80th minute, which drew the penalty that would save Hoffenheim’s season. In that respect, Roberto Firmino is truly the master of his own destiny.

But what if Hoffenheim had failed to escape the drop? The following season was Firmino’s breakthrough as a professional; in 2013-14, he scored 16 league goals and set up 12 more as Hoffenheim improved to a ninth-place Bundesliga finish. Perhaps he would have moved to another top-division club, in Germany or elsewhere, and put in a similarly impressive season to draw the attention of Europe’s biggest teams. Or maybe Hoffenheim would have managed to retain him for a push to return to the Bundesliga, obfuscating his talents in the second division for the time being.

In any number of ways, his career would have progressed down a considerably different path. It was the following two seasons that saw Firmino cement his status as Hoffenheim’s most influential player, and one of the Bundesliga’s most promising talents. Those were the circumstances that led him to Liverpool, where he moved for a reported £29 million in the summer of 2015.

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There was a conspiracy theory that once made the rounds among Liverpool’s sprawling online fan community, which suggested the club’s infamous transfer committee really bought Firmino for Klopp. Brendan Rodgers may have been the manager, but he was on borrowed time; Fenway Sports Group had eyes for Klopp and it was only a matter of time before they lured him out of his post-Dortmund sabbatical to replace Rodgers. Hoffenheim’s highly rated attacker was effectively a housewarming present for the manager-in-waiting.

It’s a far-fetched theory, albeit one enforced by reports that Rodgers had not wanted to sign Firmino, as well as the odd way in which the manager deployed his new player at the start of his Liverpool career. One lasting memory is the 3-1 defeat at Old Trafford in September 2015, when Firmino and Danny Ings were shunted wide in support of Christian Benteke (who scored a memorable consolation goal with an overhead bicycle kick). Firmino had a dreadful game — a makeshift winger, exposed for pace, drifting on the margins of the match before getting hauled off on 65 minutes.

Everything changed with Klopp’s arrival. The German had witnessed Firmino’s emergence in the Bundesliga firsthand; he needed no convincing of his qualities. What’s more, given Firmino’s training under a Rangnick-influenced regime at Hoffenheim, Klopp knew he had a player versed in the Gegenpressing principles on which he would build his Liverpool team. It was not long before Firmino established himself as central to Klopp’s plans, in more ways than one.

Firmino would become the nexus around which one of the era’s greatest football teams functioned. Operating through the middle of Liverpool’s frontline, he proved the perfect centre-forward to lead Klopp’s press, and the ideal facilitator for the side’s devastating counterattack. He remains one-third of the best front three in world football, a key link between the eight men playing behind him and the blistering threat posed by Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah ahead. How effective would Mané and Salah be without the selfless Brazilian between them, doing the hard yards and tying together the play?

It’s no wonder that many consider him Liverpool’s most irreplaceable player, and the hardest one to find cover for. Imagine, then, a world in which Liverpool didn’t have him at all.

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The Anfield Wrap’s Neil Atkinson once spoke of Firmino’s “spiritual” importance to Klopp’s Liverpool — a factor at once intangible and yet wholly essential to the ethos that has reared the club’s sixth European Cup and its first English title in 30 years. Firmino is the embodiment of how Klopp’s Liverpool should play football: an intoxicating union of skill and technique with effort, aggression, self-belief, and tactical intelligence. His is the swagger and exuberance of a man who has not let the grind of professional football dampen his love of the game, nor sand down his personality into something less eccentric.

For that, the man they call Bobby is adored by Liverpool supporters the world over. He is the recipient of perhaps the most infectious chant bestowed upon a Liverpool player since Fernando Torres, the refrain of “Si, Señor!” having now boomed around grounds across the world. He has become one of the most beloved players in the club’s modern history and for many fans it would be unfathomable to consider this Liverpool team’s success without him.

And yet, all it would have taken was for the linesman’s flag to stay down on that spring day in Dortmund seven years ago. Hoffenheim would have gone down, and Firmino would have probably made his way to another Bundesliga club, or perhaps tried his hand elsewhere on the continent. The only thing that seems likely, provided he stayed fit, is that he’d continue his progression as a footballer and eventually get a big move somewhere—though where, exactly, would be left to circumstance. It’s not hard to imagine him as one of Diego Simeone’s favourite sons at Atlético Madrid, or part of Leonardo Jardim’s world-beaters at Monaco.

Where would that have left Klopp’s Liverpool? Christian Benteke was not long for Klopp’s world and even a fit Daniel Sturridge was clearly not in the manager’s plans as a regular starter. Divock Origi has proven a serviceable player for Liverpool (and a cult hero to boot) but has never found the requisite consistency. Firmino’s presence meant that Klopp could prioritise his budget in other areas — specifically on pace and quality in wide areas, hence the arrivals of Mané and Salah in consecutive summers. Firmino’s absence would probably have led to a different recruitment strategy; perhaps Gini Wijnaldum wouldn’t have arrived for £25 million in the same summer as Mané if the Reds had also needed another striker.

Prospective names from the recent past, like Nabil Fekir, come to mind as options they could have turned to. All in all, you’d have backed Klopp to figure it out and build a winner. But as his tenure at Liverpool has shown, the margins at the highest level are painfully thin. Replace Roberto Firmino with someone who gives you even 90% of what Firmino does and there’s no guarantee that silverware awaits.

“He is the connector for our team,” Klopp said of Firmino after the 4-0 demolition of Leicester City on Boxing Day 2019, in which his number 9 scored two. “He is not the only one who can play that position, but he can play that position in a very special way.”

And so you’re left to wonder whether one of the great football men of our time — someone who well understands the fickle nature of this game we love — grasps how close everything came to being so very different.