Manchester City 2 Liverpool 3
A perfect half of football and “the best we ever played” takes the Reds into the FA Cup Final in May.
A perfect half of football and “the best we ever played” takes the Reds into the FA Cup Final in May.
Manchester City 2 (Jack Grealish 47 and Bernardo Silva 91)
Liverpool 3 (Ibrahima Konate 9 and Sadio Mane 17 and 45)
Man of the Match: Thiago Alcantara. Never gave the ball away and kept the Reds and the game as a whole ticking the entire time. A footballing artist.
The move which defined today’s game started with a chest pass from the eventual goal scorer Sadio Mane into the path of Trent Alexander-Arnold who’s outrageous cross field ball with the outside of his right boot found Luis Diaz on the full. The Colombian striker was blocked off by a Manchester City defender but the ball rolled loose for Andy Robertson to try his luck with a long range shot but this was blocked too. The unremitting pressure was too much for a Manchester City defence (and team as a whole) who had barely left their own half and with just seconds left until the Half-Time whistle were no doubt happy to slink away at the halfway point in this Semi-Final just two goals adrift. But this was just a foretaste of the third killer goal on the stroke of Half-Time and a 45 minute period of football Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp called immediately after the game as “one of the best we ever played”.
Diaz picked up the loose ball and exchanged passes with Andy Robertson before the Scotsman picked out today’s Man of the Match, Thiago Alcantara. Thiago was everywhere today. Classy, artisan touches, pressing for loose balls and always keeping the game flowing and in Liverpool’s case, going forward, and with intent. Thiago squeezed a one touch pass through to Trent Alexander-Arnold, the initial instigator of the move mere seconds ago and who’d continued his run to the edge of the Manchester City penalty area. The Liverpool wing back returned an instant pass back to his Spanish playmaking midfielder and Thiago’s instant following pass fed Sadio Mane on the corner of the penalty area and his scissor volley flew past Zack Steffen in the Manchester City goal. The move typified everything that Liverpool stood for in a first half of play today that Jurgen Klopp rightly lauded as the “best we ever played” and at 3–0 at the Half-Time break, Liverpudlian Reds inside a sunshine filled Wembley Stadium were in absolute dreamland.
Such dreams were shattered slightly just 70 seconds into the second half as Manchester City’s most impressive player today, Gabriel Jesus, stretched the Reds defensive line for the first time, tricked his way past goalkeeper Alisson Becker before squaring a simple pass for Jack Grealish to reduce their arrears, and the score line, to 3–1. We’ll return to the dreamland status of the Half-Time score line shortly but first the second period of play today was all Manchester City as they finally got a foothold in the game, a goal and some much needed impetus. Whereas the first half was almost exclusively played within the Manchester City half of the field, now the game was stretched and more in keeping with their league encounter just 6 days ago. With both teams employing a high defensive line, the second half was a spree of attacking runs that defeated each team’s offside trap and both Mo Salah for the Reds and Gabriel Jesus for the Manchester City Blues beating the high defensive line(s) before Salah shot weakly into the side netting and Jesus forcing fine defensive work from Virgil van Dijk and brilliant saves from the Reds goalkeeper Alisson Becker. There were half chances and there was a panicky final couple of injury time minutes with Manchester City now throwing everything they had at Liverpool, but despite Bernardo Silva’s 91st minute goal reducing the score line to 3–2, the Reds held out to deservedly take their place in the English game’s season ending showpiece event, the FA Cup Final.
But back to dreamland and that perfect half of heavy metal Jurgen Klopp football. What cannot be overstated enough is the absolute perfection of performance Klopp’s team provided in the first half today. I half jokingly stated in last weekend’s article on the team’s 2–2 draw in the Premier League that both Klopp and Pep Guardiola had reinvented the game with their press/counter press style and with their high defensive lines they’ve effectively eradicated a good third of the playing area as a whole. Today, the Reds effectively drew a line ten yards into their own half and steadfastly refused to play inside that no-go area. Manchester City mustered just one shot in the entire first half of play and a shot already lost to the mists of time. Liverpool’s front attacking three of Sadio Mane, Mo Salah and Luis Diaz simply never stopped chasing and harrying the Manchester City defence and with Thiago, Fabinho and a particularly impressive Naby Keita swallowing up loose balls and recycling them forward, and quickly, it’s not verbose or overstating matters in confirming that Liverpool simply did not allow their blue shirted rivals from Manchester to leave their own half of the field.
Such was the dominance, it was hard to believe the players left the field at Half-Time and the Reds were 3 goals in front of their nearest challengers to the title of the best football club team in the entire world. Klopp’s Reds flatly refused to let Manchester City have a cliché ridden “kick of the ball” in the first half, and certainly not in their defensive third of the field. It was relentless pressing, no ball was ever lost or given up on. Oleksandr Zinchenko, Nathan Ake and Zack Steffen were all forced into giving away cheap possession and in Steffen’s case, an embarrassing second goal presented to Sadio Mane on a silver platter. The chased and harried for possession was recycled, another transitional period of play commenced, and when Liverpool lost possession of that prized bag of wind, they snapped and snared their way back into custody of it. Double goal scorer Sadio Mane and particularly Naby Keita typified the relentless press of the Liverpool attacking four. Together with Salah and Diaz (who was special today), they never gave the Manchester City defence a chance to relax into their composed style of play.
The first half display from Liverpool today was something else and that something still eludes an exact description of a four decades long fan of the beautiful game. Manchester City were dreadful in the first half but equally they were chased, pushed and pressed and indeed counter pressed into falling so deep into their own half there were passages of play whereby they simply couldn’t get out. The Reds forced a needless corner that led to Ibrahima Konate’s towering header on 9 minutes for the game’s opening goal and with a Blues defence wobbling and unsure of itself, Sadio Mane chased a lost cause and came away with a second and decisive goal. The 5/6 minute period after the second goal was noteworthy for being the loudest and most constantly singing and joyous I’ve seen a Reds “end” at Wembley in many a long month and aside from that lame in joke, Liverpool just swept around a bedraggled Manchester City and when they lost the ball momentarily, they grabbed it quickly back and started the transitional torment all over again.
Your humble footballing narrator remains stunned at the first half display today of my beloved Liverpool Reds and it’s perhaps summed up with the day’s third goal. The goal scorer starts the move with a chest pass near the halfway line and the team’s defensive wing back nonchalantly smashes a perfect cross field pass with the outside of his foot. The game’s Man of the Match then artistically, and with a minimum of deft touches, progresses the game through the opposition's defensive line, and in league with the right wing back (who’s now playing centre forward) combine for a one/two that the team’s central striker (and first line of defence and bloody pest all game long) carves into the bottom corner of the opposition’s net.
“PlayStation Football” indeed.
The Reds are now a victorious two-legged European Semi-Final away from playing every single possible game this season, and a season in which they are still in every possible competition they entered at the start of the season.
Today they achieved 45 minutes of footballing perfection rightly described by their Boss as “the best we ever played”.
This incredible season rolls on.
Thanks for reading. There are umpteen articles on Liverpool FC within my archives and the three most recently published are linked below:
Liverpool 3 Benfica 3
Heavy Metal football? More a slow, slow, quick, quick slow foxtrot into the last 4 of the European Cup.medium.com
7 European trips following the Mighty Reds of Liverpool
Volume 5: Deportivo Alaves, UEFA Cup Final, 2001. A Cup Final Special Edition!medium.com
Manchester City 2 Liverpool 2
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