Liverpool might not have been behind in their Champions League semi-final tie at any point but they were certainly on the ropes after the first half in Villarreal on Tuesday night. It’s hard to think of a worse 45 minutes they’ve played this season.
The two-goal advantage which they had worked so hard to accrue at Anfield had been wiped away and it was unclear how they were going to quell both the crowd and the home side at the Estadio de la Ceramica. The Reds’ worst pass accuracy of 2021/22 was 74 percent, in the 2-2 draw at Chelsea, but in the first half at Villarreal it was down at just 65 percent.
Jurgen Klopp’s side conceded their earliest goal of the season, let in two-or-more in the first half for only the fourth time and it was the only match of that quartet where they didn’t also score themselves. In their biggest game of the campaign, Liverpool were in a real state at the interval.
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On the face of it, Klopp didn’t change the team all that much before the second half got underway. Luis Diaz replaced Diogo Jota, and that enabled Sadio Mane to play centrally (from where he’s done so well recently). But that simple switch meant the Reds had undoubtedly their most in-form front three on the pitch.
The trio of Diaz, Mane and Mohamed Salah have started nine matches together and, in those games, Liverpool have scored 24 goals, or 2.7 per match. They comfortably topped that with three in the opening 30 minutes of the second half to put the tie beyond the reach of Unai Emery’s team.
Their impact was clear for all to see. Diaz had four shots, the most of any Liverpool player on the night, and scored the equaliser. Salah assisted the goal which got Liverpool back into the match while Mane bagged the winner to become the highest scoring African player in the history of the Champions League knockout phase.
And it wasn’t just that they helped the Reds to play much better, as important as that clearly was, but that they worked so well together. It was Mane who appeared to benefit most, with Liverpool’s number 10 creating chances for both Diaz and Salah, as well as playing a direct role in five of his side’s final six shots in the match.
Recoveries such as that made at Villarreal are far from commonplace. For instance, Liverpool have been two goals down at half-time on 37 occasions in the Premier League and have only come back to win three times (against Tottenham Hotspur in 1999, Fulham five years later and at Manchester City in 2008). As bad as they were prior to the half time break, the Reds deserve tremendous credit for putting in arguably their best second half of a remarkable campaign.
The numbers back up that assertion too. Probably the most notable and vital statistic was that the home side didn’t have a single shot at goal in the second half. Kopites would certainly have enjoyed the interval far more had they known that Francis Coquelin’s goal would prove to be Villarreal’s final effort of the match.
Keeping them at bay was almost as important as scoring. With an electric atmosphere in the ground, it would’ve likely taken more than simply introducing Diaz from the bench to keep Liverpool in the competition had Villarreal gone 3-0 up at any point in the second half. An upset greater than the Reds’ recovery against Barcelona in 2019 (at least according to Opta) would very much have been on the cards.
And as well as shutting out Emery’s side entirely, Liverpool had 13 shots in the second half. It’s only the third time in 2021/22 that they have had a shot difference of at least +13 after the break, and it’s interesting that the one instance of a higher total (+14) occurred in their previous league match at Newcastle United.
With an incredible season drawing to a hopefully glorious finale, Klopp’s boys have rarely looked better in the second halves of matches. As the manager said after the game: “We were too rushed, you have to play your own football and in the second half we did that." They’ve rarely done so better, Jurgen.
