Coutinho the magician returns but is unable to conjure up a winner
The rehabilitation of Philippe Coutinho was intended to be a gradual process, but Jurgen Klopp was forced to call upon his little maestro mid-emergency as his Liverpool side found themselves one goal short of victory in a Champions League game they had once seemed certain to win.
The Brazilian who had his heart set on Barcelona for much of the summer dusted himself down and tried to cast a spell over Sevilla, a team who had emerged from a disorientating first half to claim a point that even they seemed to accept with a degree of surprise. It was not simply that Roberto Firmino missed a penalty, although that did not help, it was that a Liverpool attack that had threatened to slice the visitors into pieces gradually ground to a halt.
In the first half, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, scorer of Liverpool’s second, looked like one of Europe’s great emergent attacking forces and the futile attempts of Nicolas Pareja in conceding a penalty before the break showcased it perfectly. First, he tried to dispossess Mane by handling the ball, and when that did not work he wrapped a hand around the winger’s waist.
Having previously scored the first, Firmino clipped a post with his penalty just minutes before half-time. It was a game in which Liverpool finished with 24 attempts on goal, seven on target and just the two goals to show for it. Sevilla managed just two on target and scored them both, the 72nd-minute equaliser from Joaquin Correa a beautifully executed finish, before Klopp unleashed Coutinho, Daniel Sturridge and Alex OxladeChamberlain from the bench in quick succession.
By then, Sevilla’s coach Eduardo Berizzo had already been sent to the stands by the Dutch referee, having proffered the ball to Joe Gomez for a throw-in and then tossed it away as the full-back reached for it, the second time the Argentine coach had committed the offence. Berizzo offered the excuse that he did it the second time to even up his earlier mistake – an excuse that was hard to believe.
“I did throw the ball away and I was trying to waste time to stop the advantage [enjoyed by Liverpool],” Berizzo said. “When a similar thing took place and we were chasing the game I still decided to throw the ball away and make up for what I had done [even though Sevilla were losing]. I wanted to do the sportsmanlike thing. I explained that to my counterpart.”
His counterpart Klopp had ended the game in something of an emotional state, with Gomez also dismissed in the last few seconds for a second yellow card. The Liverpool manager said he was invited into the Sevilla dressing room afterwards to have a discussion with the opposition following a game in which both benches sniped at each other, and generally speaking the German was philosophical about the chances his team had missed.
They had conceded the first in the fifth minute, Correa playing in the overlapping full-back Sergio Escudero who cut the ball back to the near post, where Dejan Lovren missed the cross and Wissam Ben Yedder squeezed it in from close range. Liverpool never looked like they would struggle with creating chances, the problem was evidently going to be converting them. “That is not an illness,” Klopp said, “we can work on this.”
Their equaliser arrived on 21 minutes. Alberto Moreno fed the ball into Jordan Henderson and then pursued the captain’s perfectly weighted pass down to the byline to
cut the ball back for Firmino to score. The second Liverpool goal was fortunate, Salah retrieving possession from Steven N’zonzi and clearly fouling the former Premier League midfielder, before his shot took an outrageous deflection off defender Simon Kjaer and deceived goalkeeper Sergio Rico. Then came the penalty missed by Firmino.
In the second half, the longer it went on without a third home goal, the more the threat loomed that Sevilla could extricate themselves, and so it eventually proved. The equaliser was a fine finish from Correa, who controlled a throughball by substitute Luis Muriel with one glorious touch and stroked it past Loris Karius with the second. Muriel had a late chance to win the game, as Klopp staked everything on a victory with his substitutions.
There was a warm reception for Coutinho as he stepped off the bench, a sign from the Anfield crowd that whatever feelings he might have for Barcelona, they understood and forgave them and in the meantime could he please conjure a goal up to win this match.
Unlike in the performance for Brazil earlier in the month, this Coutinho looked a little rusty and the dramatic finale was just beyond him, although Liverpool do still have a vacancy for a match-winner.