Reds maul Los Blancos under the European lights of Anfield
Liverpool 2 Real Madrid 0, 27th November 2024
LIVERPOOL 2 (Mac Allister 52, Gakpo 76)
REAL MADRID 0
In the afterglow of such a thoroughly dominant and impressive defeat of the reigning European Champions in the white hot intensity of an Anfield baying for the blood of revenge of past European heartache at the hands of Los Blancos of Real Madrid, it would be easy to get carried away, swept up in flights of footballing romantic fancy and perhaps I already have or maybe, just maybe, I will as we continue. But there is an undeniable fact underpinning this radiant red glow after the triumph of the night before and that is until Lucas Vázquez and Brahim Díaz forced Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher into two late injury time saves at the very end of the game, Real Madrid had just one shot on his goal in the entirety of the game and that came via a penalty from Kylian Mbappé on 60 minutes, and the giant Irishman in the Reds goal promptly and brilliantly beat it away with disdain. How Anfield erupted! But not only that, the scholars of footballing excellence inside Liverpool’s very own Coliseum will not need reminding that for an hour their team had pressed, chased, hassled and hustled the European Champions not only out of their stride but into timid submission and happy to play a niggly, physical game of stop/start nothingness in order to prevent the overwhelming red tide swarming towards them again and again.
In short, Liverpool were magnificent, Real Madrid completely outplayed, and whilst the Reds top the new Champions League table with a perfect 5 wins from 5, Los Blancos find themselves in 24th place and a rung higher on the league ladder than PSG with both scrambling for also-ran qualification into the knock-out stages early in 2025.
Yes Real Madrid are currently depleted by injuries but so are Liverpool albeit to a lesser degree. England international and Madridista number 5 Jude Bellingham was honest enough post-match to admit last night was a bad result for his team against “the best performing team in Europe” before continuing, starkly and frankly, “from the first minute, they took control of the game”. This Liverpool did, controlling and dominating a first half of tempestuous, physical and high octane football, forever pressing their visitors into their own half of the field and only once allowing them the space to break at speed on the counter attack. This was snuffed out by a wonderful sliding tackle from arguable “Man of the Match” Conor Bradley on Kylian Mbappé which roused a thunderous roar from the Anfield crowd befitting a goal, not a possible and probable goal saving tackle. The 21 year old Irishman, deputising once more for Trent Alexander-Arnold, hobbled from the field on 86 minutes with a suspected hamstring injury and only minutes after Curtis Jones left the field uninjured and substituted, but my call for the game’s truly outstanding player. The 23 year old Liverpudlian was not only instrumental in ensuring the Reds passed and moved the ball in their decades old tradition but also in the 21st Century form of the game espoused and perfected by Arne Slot and his predecessor Jürgen Klopp, of pressing high and running, forcing your opponent into submission in their own half of the field, and to press, press, press, never letting up, never allowing them the freedom of thought to build their own game and momentum of play.
Jones was magnificent but so were so many of the men in all red around him. Darwin Núñez may not have scored from his hat-trick of first half chances but was his usual chaos magic threat and pest up front. Ryan Gravenberch, as with Curtis Jones above, pressed high up field and barely lost a defensive contest in the centre of midfield. Ibrahima Konaté continues to be the “legs” and speed sweeping up defensive problems around his skipper Virgil van Dijk. Luis Díaz, the Colombian magician, full of guile and running and although Mo Salah had a somewhat quiet evening even before missing a 70th minute penalty, the move leading to the penalty itself deserves noting for the magnificence of the team move and football involved. Deep inside his own half of the field by the corner flag Conor Bradley won yet another 50/50 tackle before releasing Luis Díaz who after winning a brief tussle for the ball released a marauding Mo Salah on the right wing with an impudent flicked pass with the outside of his right foot. Now running at speed and bearing down on the edge of the Madrid penalty area Salah feints to cut inside before cutting outside the challenge of Ferland Mendy, turning the French international “inside out” in the footballing vernacular, and although Salah would inexplicably miss the resultant penalty kick, Cody Gakpo would score a beautiful leaping header just 6 minutes later to set the seal on a quite spectacular and comprehensive win.
Did I forget to mention the goal scorers in my footballing flight of excitable fancy? Gakpo was superb once again from the substitutes bench and his goals return poses a lovely problem for Arne Slot to have in finding a place for his fellow countryman in the starting XI and Alexis Mac Allister vied with Conor Bradley and Curtis Jones for last evening’s most impressive playing performance. The Argentinian’s goal was a thing of real beauty too, the result of a quick one/two pass with Conor Bradley before steering a precise shot beyond the reach of Thibaut Courtois and into the far corner of his net. For 52 minutes it seemed the giant Belgian goalkeeper in the Real Madrid goal would deny Liverpool, yet again, with a string of important saves. But like his Los Blancos teammates, he left the Coliseum of Anfield a defeated man.
Let’s see if the boss is rather more measured and less excitable than I am in his post-match analysis.
Arne’s Afterword
“I liked a lot what I saw. Of course not everything. I think we controlled the first half with creating a few chances, but I also thought we were still a bit sloppy…I said, ‘Try to be even more patient, let the gaps open up instead of forcing them.’ Then it helps if, the first seven minutes after half-time I think we had total dominance, they even didn’t come across the halfway line. If you score a goal like this, then we were flying”.
“I think it’s always good to win a game, and especially a big game like this because you know you face so many quality players. For me, it would even mean more if we go into the later stages of the tournament because this is such a strange and different set-up in the Champions League that it’s difficult to judge how important these wins are. If we arrive in the last 16 or the quarter-finals or wherever we can arrive to and we face them again and then we are able to beat them, that would be maybe a bigger statement than this. But we are definitely happy with the win, let that be clear”.
“I think the effort we put in during the first half helps us to be as good as we are in the second half. If you play again at this level, it’s so difficult to outplay them already in the first half but you invest, you invest, you invest — you keep on running, keep being aggressive, keep trying to press them high. And then in the second half, it’s not only with us but you see more goals in the second half than the first half”.
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.
Every time I see "Real Madrid" in print I wonder if there's a "Fake Madrid" playing somewhere. (Yes, I know that's not how "Real" is pronounced in this context; it just looks like the English work if you don't put diacritical marks on it.)