Well, that was wild. Not to mention thrilling, giddy and at times deeply confusing, a football match that seemed to rove at high speed across the genres: from revenge drama, to comedy, to thriller, to outright imperial triumph.
This was also an an absolute destruction. It is probably worth calling it one of the great European performances by Real Madrid. From 2-0 down on 14 minutes to 5-2 up on 65; this in a knockout tie away from home against the team they met in last year’s final.
On the other hand they were up against opponents here who seemed to lose themselves, in a game that carried a sense of endings for Jürgen Klopp and this iteration of his team. Liverpool simply fell apart at times. The defending was ragged and unworthy. The midfield was outgunned and outmanoeuvred.
Not always: there were moments of high-energy combat in the first half that dissolved into a kind of freebase-football, an endless brain-frazzling, overload of the senses, like watching a live action YouTube highlights reel, as these two teams simply surged back and forth through the vacant spaces. Where was the filler, the parts where you’re supposed to breathe?
Perhaps Klopp will linger on fine details, moments that might have gone differently. But Madrid are also just a brilliantly ruthless, unforgiving team. There has been a lot of talk about their magical qualities, the regal will to power. But the real story here is cold, hard, talent: a superlative midfield and supreme speed and coherence in attack.
Vinícius Júnior and Karim Benzema repeatedly cut huge, yawning holes in the Liverpool defence, seemed to be moving through cleaner air, to have a more advanced grasp of gravity, physics, the arc of the ball. Vinícius scored two and made one. He skipped and chopped and glided past Trent Alexander-Arnold as the mood took him. Benzema also scored two and made one. He hasn’t been totally fit, hasn’t been in his best form. But he is just such a smooth, intelligent footballer, able to do pretty much what he wants with the ball, always seeing the space around him.
The start had promised something more classical. Even colours have their own emotional power when these teams meet: white and red shirts against the green, and the low Anfield roof lights that give a dreamy quality, a blur at the edge of your vision. There was a thrill in seeing Madrid emerge at the start. Here come the ghosts, the imperial troopers, the inflicters of strange agonies.
There were pantomime boos for the players, then a more heartfelt and utterly deserved volley of jeers for the Uefa anthem. Paris 2022 was a disaster that might have been even more of a disaster. Uefa’s wretched refusal to make amends, to apologise without reservation and offer recompense to those affected is a stain on the game, and a reminder of the basic fibre of those who run it.
It all started with a wonderful Liverpool goal. Mo Salah produced the perfect rolled pass, what happened next was spectacular and also very funny. There has been talk about Darwin Núñez’s finishing. Basically he just leathers it. What about finesse, what about a more gentle craft?
Here he produced something for everyone, a pirouetting backheel flick that was also somehow battered into the net. With 13 minutes gone it was two, Salah prodding the ball home after a horribly clumsy touch from Thibaut Courtois.
But Klopp is right. Madrid don’t panic. Even when they seem to be moving apart a little, to be literally panicking, they don’t panic. That midfield is just so bold and so strong, so good at asserting its rhythms, so good at finding those viciously incisive passes. It was 2-2 by half-time.
The entire Liverpool backline stood and watched, interested observers, as Vinícius curled in the first. Alisson produced his own horribly casual howler to assist Vinícius in the scoring of his second.
After that this became something grisly, the spectacle of collapse, entropy, a Liverpool team that just looked utterly done, lacking in shape and structure, unable to find any kind of safe ground, anything to cling to.
The fifth goal, Benzema’s second, was the moment where the night just seemed to fall apart, to lose its tension. Fabinho was poor all game. He lost the ball again. The white shirts swarmed, selected angles, decorated the moment. Benzema had time to round Alisson, pause, think about the best way to ease the ball into the Liverpool net, finally opting for a neat little lofted sidefoot, before walking across to celebrate, a team having fun with its fans, and a jarring spectacle in a ground Pep Guardiola used to call “that place”, a place of derangement and gruelling energies. Well, not on this night.
There is, of course, a second leg to come, and hope will still spring. Some parts of Liverpool’s team did work well. Stefan Bajcetic held his own in the first half. Núñez played well, a man constantly fleeing from his own imaginary swarm of angry seagulls, and to good effect at times.
Otherwise this was not so much a defeat as a moment where the passage of time seemed to come into sharp focus. Carlo Ancelotti said after the Champions League final last summer that Liverpool were “easier to decipher”, because their style is known, formulaic, repetitively grooved. There are strengths; but not unknowns. It didn’t seem like a criticism of Klopp, although of course it is: we can decode you.
Despite that, Klopp’s plan has still worked in the last two Champions League final meetings. Liverpool have lost on fine-point details. Here, by contrast, they were decoded mercilessly, the same weak points gouged out time after time, the same bruises pummelled.
There has been a lot of talk about the power of the Premier League, its financial muscle, the talent drain. And in fairness Madrid were playing a team here that lost 3-0 to Wolves at the start of the month. But by the end this was simply an exhibition of their own fluid, easy strengths; against a Liverpool model that looked horribly brittle, a team out of time.
