Penalti suficiente para Salah en Girona
Girona 0 Liverpool 1, 10th December 2024
GIRONA 0
LIVERPOOL 1 (Salah 63)
First things last, it was never a penalty but we all live in a “VAR World” now and it was awarded after a referral from the dystopian eye in the sky and Mo Salah did what Mo Salah does, and the Mighty Reds in all black continue their perfect record of 6 wins from 6 games in this season’s Champions League and are all but certain of qualification for the Last 16 when the competition really begins next year. A small capacity crowd within the tight confines of Estadi Montilivi bore witness to the epitome of a “game of two halves” with the first an entertaining affair of often thrilling end-to-end football bringing the very best from a returning Alisson Becker in the Reds goal as well as his counterpart in the home goal, Paulo Gazzaniga. Born exactly nine months apart, the 32 year old shot stoppers each had three saves to make in an exciting first half the second period failed to live up to and whilst Gazzaniga was kept busy either side of Salah’s contentious 63rd minute penalty by Andy Robertson in the lead up to the penalty and Trent Alexander-Arnold twice in as many minutes late in the game, Alisson Becker had just one save to make in the early seconds of the half from Arnaut Danjuma and from hereon in returned to goalkeeping duty in customary fashion — with a clean sheet.
Girona, resplendent in red and white checked shirts reminiscent of the Croatia national team and filled with past Premier League players (Arnaut Danjuma, Daley Blind, Oriol Romeu, Donny van de Beek and Bryan Gil to name just five…) more than played their part in a superb first half with Blind testing Alisson Becker in the Reds goal on 11 minutes before their two stand out players, Miguel Gutiérrez and Yáser Asprilla, each forced Alisson into strong saves on 17 and 37 minutes respectively. But aside from Danjuma’s early effort in the second half the Spanish side soon faded in a scrappy second period of play entirely dominated by a full strength Liverpool team intent on keeping their 100% record intact. Darwin Núñez twice forced Gazzaniga into first half saves and after Joe Gomez (dear old Joe Gomez!) came to close to finally breaking his goal scoring duck with a strong header on just 3 minutes brilliantly tipped over the bar by the Argentinian goalkeeper.
The goal is coming Joe! The goal is coming!
And that’s all she wrote.
Let’s see what the Boss thought of events this evening in Catalonia.
Arne’s Afterword
“If you play against a team that has such a good idea about football, knows how to bring the ball out from the back — like some other teams we faced recently, like City or Real Madrid — then you need to be so intense if you want to make it difficult for them. But if every time you are waiting a few seconds before you press and if you do press, you are so easily outplayed, then this team can cause you a lot of problems”.
“Alisson has been so important for this club for so many years, for his country as well. He showed today that he’s probably one of the best, in my opinion the best goalkeeper in the world. And let’s hope he can keep continuing to bring these performances. Let’s hope even more that he can stay fit”.
“If you ask me about all the six games, I’m really pleased with all the results, I am really pleased with the five other games with the way we played. I’m far from pleased about the performance tonight”.
Thanks for reading. I pen my thoughts on every Liverpool game and in recent seasons, with the addition of numerous pieces of retro writing on Reds games of the past, I’ve curated and created the following two self-published books:
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.