Injuries have not helped, of course, compounding a failure to upgrade the midfield. There are concrete factors that certainly seem to have contributed. How something so good could prove so ultimately fragile.
Thousands of words have been dedicated in recent months in an attempt to understand how a team that was so painstakingly constructed, put together with such thought and expertise and precision, could come apart at the seams so quickly and so easily. Quite how Liverpool’s collapse has happened remains, even now, something of a mystery.
The difference, this time, was that it was being forced to play the European champion. Liverpool, suddenly, looked to be what it has been for much of the season: a mid-table Premier League team caught in the throes of an awkward, jarring transition. Karim Benzema had a shot deflected into the goal for four, and then danced through, his shoes soft and his touch sure, to make it five. Vinícius Júnior scored one goal, wonderfully, and then had a second presented to him by the Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson. It is only nine months, after all, since it played its third Champions League final in five years, Klopp sufficiently confident that the halcyon days would keep rolling that he advised his team’s fans - even in defeat - to book their hotel rooms for this year’s showpiece.Īnd then the reverie suddenly evaporated and reality descended. Somewhere deep inside this Liverpool team is the muscle memory of what it once was, and not all that long ago. The only change this season - on this evidence - is that it has streamlined the process to such an extent that it now takes no more than half an hour, with a break in the middle for a quick bite to eat.įar more striking than the fact of Liverpool’s defeat on Tuesday, then, was the manner of it. En route to European glory last season, Real Madrid generally required the full span of a two-legged tie, up to and including extra time in the second leg, to stage the miraculous recovery that has become its calling card. To a large extent it is increasingly odd that anyone else bothers entering the competition.Ĭarlo Ancelotti’s team has mastered the comeback, turned it into an art form, boiled it down to its very essence. A stirring Real Madrid recovery is part of the deal. This is Real Madrid, after all, and this is the Champions League. That Real Madrid won at Anfield does not count as a surprise of any sort.
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