By Sam Wallace at Anfield
There was just one goal between them in the final in Paris nine months ago, as the two great sides of European football of the moment, but the game changes so quickly and this time Liverpool felt lost somewhere in their past, reaching out for a moment beyond their grasp.
This was such a demolition that by the end it was jarring to recall that Jurgen Klopp’s team had led by two goals after 15 frantic opening minutes. What followed was a great Real Madrid performance pegged somewhere between the passing of one era and the dawning of another at this club where the succession is in good hands.
There was Luka Modric at 37, still the orchestrator of a powerful force, and Karim Benzema with two second half goals. And then there was the skill and edge of Vinicius Junior with two more, and the dominant Eduardo Camavinga in midfield.
It will take a very good team to stop Real Madrid from capturing the 15th of their titles in European football’s leading competition this season, and in their current state, it was clear to all that Liverpool are not that team. They had restored something of the season’s momentum with two successive wins in the Premier League but then came this heavy defeat that again asks questions as to what it is that is coming after Klopp’s great five-year cycle of 2017-2022.
They must wait three weeks to bring this tie to a conclusion and it will hang over them in the four crucial Premier League games that fall in the interim. There may be some drama to come at the Bernabeu on March 15 but by the end even Klopp said that it felt done. A scoreline more akin to the aggregate than simply half a tie.
The drift from the elite of European football can be a gradual shift or it can come at a side hard and fast - as it did to Liverpool on this occasion. They had never before conceded five goals at home in a European tie. Vinicius was the youngest to score two for the away side at Anfield in European competition since a teenage Johan Cruyff did so for Ajax against Bill Shankly’s Liverpool in 1966. A historic night indeed.
For a while it was hopeful for Liverpool when they tore into Real for two quick goals. But Real have won five of the last nine Champions League titles and their mastery of this competition – whatever their domestic league circumstances – remains astonishing.
They are a team with a clear identity, a great depth of experience and an utterly ruthless streak. A team with Liverpool’s fragile confidence turned out to be easy meat for the Carlo Ancelotti second era team of European champions. They lost David Alaba, the great Austrian international, to injury in the first half, although not before he had been turned inside out by Mohamed Salah.
That came in a frantic opening to the game which was how Liverpool wanted it – but also how Ancelotti had anticipated it. Asked what he was thinking when his side went two down to the goals from Darwin Nunez after three minutes and then Salah, Real’s manager said that he had thought it might be something like this.
“It was not unpredictable,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t think we could concede two goals but we knew we would come under pressure. We said to the players to keep calm, keep a cool head and get the game under control.”
They did that superbly, and once they had taken the thunder out of Liverpool and out of Anfield, it turned out that there was not much left. Ancelotti talked about his veterans’ experience - Modric, Benzema, even Toni Kroos, a late substitute – and how they guided the team through the difficult moments. Less simple for Klopp, for whom faith was placed in Stefan Bajcetic, the 18-year-old midfielder who simply did his best and Fabinho, for whom form remains elusive.
It was two years and one day since Ancelotti won a historic victory as Everton manager at Anfield, the first time the club had done so in 22 years. One would certainly have to say it was much easier to do so with this great array of talent at his disposal.
Klopp said that for his Liverpool players the start to the game was “us in a nutshell”. That is to say, intense even if that was at times a little ragged. There felt like a whole two legs of excitement packed into the first half. The first goal was classic surging Liverpool riding the crest of the European night mood. Nunez finished with a flick with the inside of his heel from Salah’s cross to the near post.
Thibaut Courtois had worse to come. It was a notably firm back pass that Dani Carvajal struck at him in the 14th minute and came amid a period when players on both sides were losing their footing. Courtois could not keep his feet and Salah scored the goal that makes him Liverpool’s record goalscorer in European football, passing Steven Gerrard on 41.
Vinicius scored a magnificent first on 21 minutes, twisting away from the red shirts in the area and dispatching a right foot shot past Alisson. Liverpool’s Brazilian goalkeeper gave him his second – “slapstick”, as Klopp said more than once. Gomez’s back pass to Alisson was clattered by the goalkeeper against Vinicius and bounced into his net.
Gomez was spotted nursing what looked like a hamstring injury by the end and Klopp did not dismiss the notion that he might have lost another player to injury.
The third Real goal came soon after half-time, headed in under no pressure by Eder Militao from a free-kick deep on the left from Modric. Benzema’s first followed after a sharp exchange with Vinicius which left Liverpool flat-footed, and a shot that defeated Alisson with a deflection off Gomez. The last was a beautiful Real move in which Liverpool were second every time.
Modric took the ball off Fabinho in midfield and then slipped easily past Bajcetic. Vinicius cut the ball back to Benzema who did the necessary. As for Modric, many of those Liverpool fans who could bear to watch the last ten minutes applauded the old maestro off when he was substituted late in the game. He deserved every last moment of it.