Liverpool is liquid. Liverpool is polyvalent. Liverpool press and sit, then strike like jet fighters. Maybe they really are, just like Luis Enrique’s engaging before this game, “a perfect team”. But sometimes, sometimes, you just need a really good overseer.
Alisson is not only good here in conventional sense, murmuring around his place like a giant, colored yolk blur that makes game saving blocks and dives. He is, as Liverpool defends at times, successfully well. It is the goalkeeping as a gesture of performance, the goal of aggression as counter-aggression. Do you really believe that you will win it? How many, you say?
Liverpool win in Paris 1-0 win will attract the usual labels, most of them have a look of some villainy elements: a heist, a smash-and-grab, a perfectly accomplished with a first leg that wins away. But it is also a result of having a very, very good player in the main pitch position. And not only good, but one of the deep animals of the spirit of this group, a footballer who seems to have met in advance, Yep, this one is for him, a Alisson day.
In front of it, the main moment was the move to see Liverpool’s win in this game, the only goal was Harvey Elliott’s only three minutes left. But at the moment it became clear that they would not be gone seven minutes before. And it was a moment of Alisson, the most cinematic of his eight night -saving saves.
Désiré Doué arrived a few minutes before. He took the ball to the left, cut inside and bent a shot that seemed to be in the corner, bulging into the net, confirming the narrative of all PSG pressure. It is at this point that the familiar yellow shape appeared in the shooting again, stripping itself throughout the goalline, hanging strangely in the air of Paris, pushing an arm until the middle of the flight and diverting the ball over the crossbar with a slap of palm.
That’s the 26th shot of PSG. Liverpool scored the sole purpose in their second few minutes later. It was beautifully executed. And of course even when it came from a moment of Allison, a long pass sent to a roaring arch to one of the late arne slot subs, Darwin Núñez.
It is also a great moment for Núñez, and for the manager’s happy attitude to affect the games eventually. The first Núñez announced the ball, Marquinhos bouncing out of the way, taking care of the hooves, before finding Elliott’s running right with a good weight pass.
Even when Elliott approaches the ball you will feel the angles lining up, opening the hips to his final step as he meets the ball and returns it to the far corner, low enough and difficult enough to avoid a slightly weak palm from Gianluigi Donnarumma.
At this point the air seemed to leave the stadium. A PSG game won, and won in complex ways, took the ball, closed the space, finding ways to -on Liverpool defense, lost like smoke.
Football is the most based on activities. Full methods, storylines, gestures of frustration and glory have been sent scrolling back to some marginal details that can actually go either for a moment. This is its beauty, the reason why the argument has never been fixed, the game has never been done no matter how much money or data or peeled-eyeball attention has been thrown here.
It is in its own way that stimulates its refusal to be processed or controlled, a story of endless human variables. And sometimes you really need a good goalkeeper, the bit that makes all the other pieces make sense.
Paris has been -drenched in soft yellow lights all day, even the rugged concrete fringes around the Parc Des Princes blooming in the lovely, hammer old Parisian Spring. Both managers are early on the edge of their technical area, Luis Enrique in the Hoodie and Urban Cape, who looks like a retired seven -time champion of the world’s skateboarding.
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His team was aggressive from the first moments, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia starting right. And for the opening time here he could not contain Liverpool, their defense was sliced repeatedly by Georgian, making his ninth look since a January move from Napoli.
This is the new PSG, a move from the stars and bar days, of Neymar riding a snow leopard around his personal sub-basement disco wearing a solid bowler hat. But they can still spend more than € 50m on a Bravura January signing.
As Vitinha and João Neves control the midfield, Kvaratskhelia began to shine. He was one of the players who seemed to be bowing the game to his will. He could stop the ball like a squirrel on a branch, which was anchored to the grass more effectively than anyone around him.
The PSG could actually score three in that first half, kvaratskhelia was a constant sniping menace, socks down, highs high, hair rumpled maverick-style, able to spring and snap on one side with a fierce fast energy.
The second half is lighter. Liverpool is ready to go out to grind and graft. Alisson seemed to feel this as the game continued, a footballer in one of the rare moments of motion. It was his night, and a big step toward the end of the season.
