Liverpool’s heroes stand firm under City siege
The thunderstorm came just as Jurgen Klopp had predicted, a torrent of pressure from Manchester City that must have felt overwhelming at times, but when it was all over there was the proverbial golden sky of Anfield lore, and for the third time this season, Liverpool had done it.
That is to say they had beaten the team once considered unbeatable to claim a place in the Champions League semi-finals, having first kept their heads while Pep Guardiola’s team unleashed hell upon them for the first 45 minutes.
City played every moment of that first half as if it was the last minute of the last game of football of their lives and somehow, with heroic defending, and a little fortune, Liverpool were still in a position to win the game, and the tie after the break.
When did the weather change? It might have been when Guardiola was sent off at half-time for telling the Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz that he had been wrong about the decision to disallow what would have been City’s second goal on the night, from Leroy Sane.
Guardiola was right in that respect, it should have stood, but perhaps wrong to challenge a Spanish referee whom he knows brooks no dissent. Sent to the stand in the second half, City had lost their forceful touchline presence, although that was only part of the reason they faltered.
They had scored after just two minutes, Gabriel Jesus finishing a move of ruthless precision and, from then, City’s intensity was such that it was all Liverpool could do to keep the door closed against the gathering storm. It came down their right predominantly, where Sane and David Silva outnumbered Trent Alexander-arnold and the ball was whipped into the area, where Liverpool were obliged to take their chances.
At the time it felt the goals were inevitable but while City, and Kevin De Bruyne, were masterful in getting the ball out to that left wing, they could never quite dominate the Liverpool box in the same way – where Virgil van Dijk and Dejan Lovren were outstanding. Perhaps if that Sane goal had been allowed to stand before half-time, it might have been a different English team in the semi-finals, but once Liverpool reached the break, the game was never the same again.
Klopp has taken Liverpool to the semi-finals of the Champions League for the first time since 2008 in only his second full season at a club which is only the ninth-richest in Europe. He may yet draw the conquerors of Barcelona, the Serie A team Roma, who, so far, are the great trespassers in this game of the wealthy. Yet the Liverpool manager’s achievement is also extraordinary when one considers they sold arguably the club’s best player, Philippe Coutinho, in January and have just about broken even in spending since Klopp’s arrival in late 2015.
To win this game, Liverpool needed a man capable of seizing the moment and none are more accomplished in that art than Mohamed Salah, whose 39th goal of the season was a classic. Before half-time Klopp had tried to release some of the pressure by putting the Egyptian in a more central role and when the ball broke loose in the City area with 11 minutes of the second half played, Salah was once again in the right place at the right time.
There was another for Roberto Firmino, gifted to him by Nicolas Otamendi, and by then many of the City fans who had raged at the secret Liverpool supporters among them celebrating Salah’s goal, took it upon themselves to leave. If the failure to convert all that first-half possession – a share of 71 per cent – had been a glitch in the Guardiola matrix then Otamendi represented nothing more than sheer, galling incompetence, and they have had a gut-full of that at City in years past.
City had been broken, a gale that was all blown out, a crowd that no longer believed something magical might happen. Liverpool had emerged from the bunker of their defensive position after half-time and drew the surprising conclusion they were still very much in this.
Originally the question had been by how many they could afford to lose, the outcome was they won home and away by the handsome aggregate of 5-1. From his second-
half position in the stand alongside lieutenant Manel Estiarte, Guardiola rubbed his head in frustration.
There was a penalty he felt he was denied when Andy Robertson challenged Raheem Sterling in the first half. Firmino might have been given a second yellow for a challenge on De Bruyne seconds before the Salah goal.
This was the third defeat for Guardiola in a week, and it would be no surprise if Tottenham Hotspur make it four at Wembley on Saturday. He rejected the notion the intensity of City’s season has caught up with them and asked whether it was not the case that all teams had fluctuations in form. Yet this was the side who were supposed to be impervious to the usual weaknesses that stalk lesser teams.
There was a foul by Sterling on Van Dijk in the build-up to the City goal and, from the Dutchman’s wayward pass, City’s response was rapid. From Bernardo Silva’s interception they moved the ball from Fernandinho to Sterling and then a cross to Jesus, who finished first time with his right foot.
By the time Sane’s goal was disallowed – he had been in an offside position but the ball had ricocheted off James Milner – Liverpool had only just survived two near misses from Bernardo.
It was Sadio Mane who broke the defensive line brilliantly for the first goal, darting past Aymeric Laporte and forcing Ederson to dive at his feet. Then Salah slipped past Ederson and chipped Otamendi. The second was given to Firmino, whose finish was superb.
Only in the 66th minute had Sergio Aguero come on, the club’s greatest-ever goalscorer a Plan B on a night when they needed goals. Guardiola likes to say that just as he chooses how to win so it could be said he chooses how to lose and whatever he hoped to do, Liverpool had the answer.