Liverpool are taking a one-goal lead to Anfield after an extraordinary smash-and-grab victory over PSG, thanks to the best goalkeeper in the world.
19 games into the season we claimed that Liverpool were yet to beat a Proper Team and wouldn’t put any of the 15 sides they’ve triumphed over before this clash with Paris Saint-Germain in that category, with the Reds’ walk to the Premier League title duping us all into thinking they may enjoy a similar cruise to the Champions League gong. They’ve beaten a Proper Team now but this was about as far from a cruise as you’re ever likely to see.
It’s over three months since PSG last tasted defeat, against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, and before the visit of Liverpool they had won ten games on the bounce in all competitions, scoring four or more goals in six of those games, with two of them – including the second leg of their Champions League play-off against Brest – ending 7-0.
The inevitable confidence imbued by such a run came oozing from the pores of each and every one of them, and having faced nothing like it this season, a Liverpool side dominant to the point of apathy back home were made to look meek and impotent by not just a Proper Team but a vastly superior one.
When the supposedly indomitable Virgil van Dijk is misplacing simple passes and making inexplicable decisions like trying to play Ousmane Dembele offside when unable to do so without the aid of rocket skates, you know the feathers have been thoroughly ruffled.
Dembele – who looks to be finally living up to his scary potential after 20 goals in his last 14 games – set about retiring Andy Robertson and highlighting Alexis Mac Allister’s shortcomings in dribbling past both at will, and if it wasn’t the Frenchman tearing through the defence it was either Bradley Barcola or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who hasn’t got off to the best of starts at PSG following his £70m January move from Napoli before this visit of Dr Liverpool.
He thought he had given PSG the lead with a sublime curled shot into the far corner after a beautifully disguised pass from Vitinha that was ruled out for offside, but the pressure was unrelenting, and if not for Alisson this would have been an absolute battering.
Dembele, Kvaratskhelia (twice) and Desire Doue were all denied superbly by the only Liverpool player whose head wasn’t in a spin at the Parcs des Princes on one of those nights where PSG could have had 100 shots rather than their 27 and still not scored past him.
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He’s now gone above Pepe Reina as the Liverpool goalkeeper with the most clean sheets in the Champions League on 22, and when asked after the game it was his best performance of the season he claimed it was “the best of my life”. Alisson made nine saves in total, at least five of them requiring puffed out cheeks and a How On Earth? reaction. It was stunning.
Arne Slot was fortunate his side weren’t reduced to ten men after Ibrahima Konate pushed Barcola when the forward was bearing down on Alisson’s goal in one of those Probably A Red But Not Quite Enough Of One For Var To Overrule situations, in a game in which The Narrative dictates a sting in the tail was coming, even though Liverpool never looked likely to get near enough to PSG’s goal, let alone score in it.
Slot deserves credit for the substitutions. We can’t imagine many Liverpool fans were hugely hopeful as Darwin Nunez got stripped, but it was his presence up top which caused the necessary chaos in the PSG defence after Alisson’s long ball, while the only possible reason for Harvey Elliott’s introduction will have been for The Legs to run after PSG players, not to dash onto the pass from Nunez 47 seconds after his introduction before sweeping the ball beyond Gianluigi Donnarumma with his first touch. Alisson saves that, Donnarumma didn’t.
It was an extraordinary Smash And Grab.
Nuno Mendes looked as though he deals with a player as good as Mohamed Salah every week, snuffing the Egyptian out with such ease as to embarrass not just Salah and Liverpool but the whole of the Premier League, the Best League In The World which heralds a guy that those watching this game in isolation will view as a toothless chump as its most potent forward.
Ryan Gravenberch, who’s earned rave reviews throughout the season having done a brilliant job at the base of Slot’s midfield, was taught a lesson by Vitinha, just as every Liverpool player was outdone by their opposite number.
There’s still danger for Liverpool. They will now be huge favourites to go through, but PSG are undeniably a Proper Team, who could so easily have given Slot’s side a mountain to climb on their own patch had it not been for a brilliant individual display from the best goalkeeper in the world.
