Alisson turned in one of the great individual performances as Liverpool pulled off a stunningly underserved victory against PSG.
Gavin Cooney AT THE END of it all, Caoimhín Kelleher cut a line through the stunned silence at the Parc des Princes and embraced the man he knows he’ll never dislodge as Liverpool ’s number one.This is why Kelleher will leave Liverpool in the summer, but why he might sent on his way with another Champions League winners’ medal in his pocket.
Tonight, Alisson produced one of the finest individual performances ever seen in the Champions League knockout rounds. PSG sliced through Liverpool at will but couldn’t force the ball past the Liverpool goalkeeper, who finished the night with 10 saves while doing irredeemable damage to the whole statistical field of of Expected Goals. After the game, Alisson gamely thanked his team-mates for putting pressure on opposition players as they shot, allegedly making his job easier. Alisson, mate. Just take the credit. This generosity can at least be used as more evidence of Alisson’s good character when he is tried after this game as an accessory to larceny. In the final minutes, having soaked up PSG’s brutal pressur and with the clock ticking to a goalless draw that would feel like a win for Liverpool, Alisson larruped a long ball down the field and on top of Darwin Nunez who, in keeping with the night’s alternative energy, suddenly had the coolest head in the Parc des Princes. Having won his duel with Marquinhos, Nunez calmly got the ball under control and slid it right for Harvey Elliot, who did not have to break stride to snap the ball into the bottom corner. Gianluigi Donnarumma got a hand to the shot, but that hand was too tame. Instantly the mind thought: Alisson would have saved that. But what does that really mean? Tonight, Alisson would have saved the West’s post-war liberal consensus. Once Elliot scored, this game could be recast as a masterful away European performance by Liverpool. It wasn’t. For much of this game, the hypemen of the Premier League could be heard shifting uneasily in their seats, muttering, “Are…we the Farmer’s League?” For here were the team who have turned their domestic season into a procession caught cold by the rip-snorting energy of their opponents. Luis Enrique has overseen a remarkable thing at PSG, in turning them into an honest and likeable bunch of players. The superstars have left, and the superstars-in-waiting have taken their place. Advertisement Liverpool ended the game with less than 30% of possession – their lowest on record – and with a single, extremely effective shot on target. PSG, meanwhile, had 28 shots with which they couldn’t score. Under Arne Slot, Liverpool have generally liked to bait the opposition press, but tonight they quickly realised they had to avoid it altogether. Hence the game-plan was to Get It Launched, and while Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota gallantly scrapped for second balls, Liverpool were overwhelmed. Liverpool tonight had to experience what they used to do to opponents under Jurgen Klopp. Vitinha gave his best Luka Modric impression in midfield, conducting play as if there were no Liverpool players nearby, which in turn let loose PSG’s awesomely fluid front three. While Bradley Barcola occasionally misfired, Ousmane Dembele and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia were unplayable. Dembele’s electric running cut through Liverpool as Kvaratskhelia roved menacingly about on their fringes: only an offside visible only to AI technology denied him the prize of actually beating Alisson tonight. Liverpool survived to half-time through luck more than judgement, as Joao Neves and Barcola both blasted over the crossbar from inside the six-yard box. At half-time Liverpool agreed that this was a night to be endured, and so they dug in. Thus simplified, Andy Robertson looked like his old self while Trent Alexander-Arnold transformed himself into a dogged, reliable full-back. He was bafflingly poor on the ball, but this merely reflected his team-mates’ malaise. Elliot was on the pitch to score because of Mohamed Salah’s unfathomably bad performance: while Liverpool did occasionally pick a way past the PSG press in the second half, Salah’s final pass deserted him when it was needed. But Liverpool could rely on pressing their backs against Alisson Becker. His stand-out save was probably the moment he flung himself to his left to claw away Désiré Doué’s curling shot, but underrated is his incredible ability to turn a low save into a kind of punched clearance. Three times in the second half Alisson had to deal with low shots and crosses across the six-yard box, and rather than push them out to more danger, he managed to dig the ball, volleyball-style, out of the penalty area entirely. Without taking away from Alisson’s performance- and acknowledging Liverpool should have been a couple of goals and maybe a man down at half-time- the second-half was the stuff of suffering by design, and a reminder of just how slowly but totally Arne Slot has changed this team. Virgil van Dijk invoked the recent win over Man City post-game, saying Liverpool restricted PSG to low-percentage shots from outside the box after half-time. While PSG had the quality to turn these long shots into major chances, Alisson was good enough to re-balance the odds in Liverpool’s favour. The Brazilian then put a gloved thumb on the scales, and somehow, Liverpool are in the stronger position to progress to the quarter-finals.
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