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There were only two seconds between when Karim Benzema rolled the ball past Alisson and when placed it into the top left corner to finish Real Madrid’s 5-2 comeback win at Anfield, but it had the feel of an age. The storm raged around as Liverpool defenders scrambled with no idea how they were supposed to respond to this latest shellacking. Joe Gomez could just about get himself facing the right way in time to put a forlorn leg nowhere near the ball. By then he had been so brutally exposed that you could not blame him if all the fight were gone.
With that fifth goal, everything Liverpool had done right was washed away. There was, it should be noted, an awful lot of it in those first 20 minutes, a vision of a new front three that could have the same exponential impact as the Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah trident. The latter, who became his side’s record Champions League goalscorer when he punished Thibaut Courtois’ loose touch, seemed to relish a role that blended creator with scorer. Cody Gakpo was dropping deep, bringing defenders with him and creating gaps for Darwin Nunez to crash into.
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But this is a Liverpool of astounding brittleness. Fabinho used to be a step ahead of every counter, now he crashes to the deck in forlorn pursuit of the ball. Jordan Henderson and Trent Alexander-Arnold are not on the same wavelength anymore. Virgil van Dijk’s imperious phase might just be over. When Jamie Carragher jokes on the UEFA Champions League Post-Match Show on Paramount+ that he’d get into the team over the current No.4, your immediate response might just be ‘well go on then, can’t hurt to have a look, can it?’
Van Dijk used to be the great cheat code of defending, his five yard burst, his anticipation and his strength getting teammates out of all sorts of sticky situations. Now, he serves to accentuate the weaknesses of others who still rely on him.
In such circumstances, the unexpected is rather par for the course. Alisson hurled caution to the wind at just the moment when it might not have hurt to boot one long to Gakpo, to let the clock be his friend for the last nine minutes of the first half. As soon as the ball looped off Vinicius Junior and into the net, those familiar insecurities emerged. Liverpool suddenly remembered that they were the team who had been battered by Brentford, Brighton and Wolves. So did Real Madrid, who concluded that they had had quite enough in the tank to cruise by the Premier League’s eighth best team, now facing a season that probably ends on March 15 in the Santiago Bernabeu.
It just makes it all the more painful that to go with the home team’s nonsense, there were moments that would grace the Liverpool of Jurgen Klopp’s best years. Darwin Nunez’s particular brand of chaos fit snugly into this contest but his backheeled conversion of Mohamed Salah’s cross was delicacy and thunder in one, a player who so often this season has mistimed the simple stuff sending the ball flying off his right boot and beyond Thibaut Courtois. The Uruguayan was racing onto Trent Alexander-Arnold’s curveball as the first half wore down, a delivery that started in the channel between left back and left-center back, dropping into the space behind Dani Carvajal as it came to earth.
Indeed Alexander-Arnold, the fall guy in Paris and Madrid before, did everything he could to remind you that his defensive faults are indisputably mitigated by what he brings on the ball. His crosses crashed towards Nunez’s head; he could have had a penalty when Carvajal eased into his back at 3-2 down.
Alexander-Arnold might not have been as cruelly exposed as in past years but instead the dishonor fell to Joe Gomez, a shadow of the man who not only Jurgen Klopp but England manager Gareth Southgate seemed bound to build their defenses around before his ACL rupture in the autumn of 2020. The 25 year old was absorbed by the moment, rictus as Vinicius darted across the left corner of the area for Madrid’s first, a stunned onlooker when Eder Militao flicked in Luka Modric’s freekick for the Spanish side’s decisive third. Any manager would want to persevere with a player of Gomez’s gifts, but given the difficulty he had had in past weeks, this was akin to casting him into the lion’s den.
He wavered. No one in a Madrid shirt did for an instance. In that way they are the ultimate representation of Carlo Ancelotti, who might, at a push, raise a quizzical eyebrow to the news that life as we know it is to end in the next 15 minutes. If the first half had been altogether too end to end for the Italian’s wishes, then Madrid clearly adapted, drawing Liverpool’s high line ever higher before puncturing it with precise through balls. One side had learned how to adapt to this particular contest, the other seemed to sprint ever faster towards a standstill. This was a cold blooded evisceration by Madrid.
It brings with it the questions that Klopp might have hoped were quelled by those wins over Everton and Newcastle. Jude Bellingham alone is not going to fix this midfield. The Van Dijk successor is going to need to be found sooner rather than later. Questions should even be asked of those few who sit on the right side of the age curve: is this whole setup just a little stale?
The last time these two sides met, Liverpool left Paris bruised but not beaten. The consensus was that only slight tinkering was required for this team to take the small step that had been between them and the summit, domestically and on the continent. Nothing could seem further from the truth right now. A season that encompassed every game imaginable from August 2021 to May 2022 has been followed by one that is surely over before the first buds of spring. That isn’t even where the trouble ends. This side have fallen from the summit so vertiginously no one could believe that it is the work of a single summer to get them back on track.
