KLOPP FURY AS TIMID REDS LOSE IT LATE

Last-gasp goal gives Italians deserved win

JURGEN KLOPP looked towards the swarming Curva Nord stand with his eyes blazing and his arms outstretched. He feared this moment was coming but now? Why now?

Liverpool had just conceded and the timing of it was fatal. Lorenzo Insigne had just slid into convert Jose Callejon’s cross and, with the clock showing 90 minutes, Klopp’s team — for one night at least — were dead and buried.

Had Liverpool escaped from this emotional venue with a point, it would only have been down to luck. Napoli were superb, dominating Klopp’s team to such an extent that Liverpool failed to register a shot on target in the Champions League for the first time since February 2006.

It was their worst performance since Tottenham stripped them bare at Wembley 12 months ago and, suddenly, this 1-0 defeat has put a question mark against their progress from Group C, particularly as they must visit Paris Saint-Germain next month.

‘I’m not 100 per cent sure why that happened,’ said Klopp. ‘It’s very difficult to explain why you lose again before you see it. We were not good enough but I need one night at least to watch it again.’

He knows already that it will not be easy viewing. This performance was far removed from what you expect of a Klopp team. They were passive, meek and vulnerable and Napoli, in all honesty, should have secured three points long before the final seconds.

From kick-off, after all, Liverpool were disjointed. Klopp, buried under a baseball cap to guard against the incessant rain, must have felt like covering his eyes at times given the low quality of their passing. On such a huge pitch, it left them vulnerable.

Naby Keita, in particular, was culpable and one errant delivery almost led to an opening goal. His ball to Trent Alexander-Arnold looped over the right back’s head and it allowed Insigne to steal in from the left. His shot in the 11th minute was firm but it lacked accuracy and whistled wide.

A goal at that stage would have set this stadium alight. Napoli, who had drawn in Belgrade on matchday one, needed to make this game count with a double header against Paris Saint- Germain on the horizon but they struggled to make their territorial dominance count.

Other than a shot from Arkadiusz Milik that Alisson punched away in the 33rd minute, Liverpool kept Napoli at arms’ length, the main reason being the poise of the central defenders Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk, who was a towering presence.

They also regained an element of control when captain Jordan Henderson was forced into action in the 20th minute after Keita left the field on a stretcher. The Guinea midfielder was later taken to hospital with severe back pain.

But the one thing Liverpool could not do was impose their attacking power on Napoli. Sadio Mane was well shackled on the left, Mo Salah kept running down dead ends on the opposite flank, while Roberto Firmino was snuffed out. Those three are nowhere near the exalted levels of last season.

Other than a shot from Gini Wijnaldum that crashed into the advertising hoardings, David Ospina, the Arsenal keeper on loan at Napoli, was virtually a spectator and the manner in which Klopp headed to the dressing room left you in no doubt about what he knew needed to be changed.

Yet when they returned, there was no upturn. Napoli were the team who started with purpose and Milik, sensing the opportunity, waved his arms to the fans behind Alisson’s goal and whipped them into a frenzy.

They responded as you would expect, generating remarkable noise that bounced around this cavern, and for most the second period, Napoli were camped in Liverpool’s half. First Alisson needed to be alert to get down swiftly to his left and turn away a fizzing drive from Nikola Maksimovic that appeared to be creeping into the far corner. Gomez followed up, thrashing the ball away for a corner. Still the threat was not gone and from the set-piece that followed, Fabian Ruiz forced Alisson into action again.

Napoli kept pressing but had no fortune. When Jose Callejon’s shot beat Alisson, Gomez kicked it off the line; when substitute Dries Mertens beat Alisson, his header thudded against the bar and bounced away. The third chance, however, brought the luck with Insigne sparking bedlam.

‘You could see Napoli used the atmosphere and we couldn’t calm it down,’ said Klopp, who admitted some of the culpability for the performance should be placed on his shoulders. ‘That was not how it should have looked. But on Sunday it will be 100 per cent different.’

It needs to be. If not, Klopp will have blazing eyes once again.