Sometimes you just have to laugh. A largely terrible performance where we could barely string three passes together and where the opposition looked like world beaters, but somehow we came away with a win after only having one shot the entire night.
The reason for that is pretty simple though; the best goalkeeper in the world producing the best performance of a stellar career. Maybe the best goalkeeping performance ever? Certainly as far as Liverpool is concerned anyway. Peter Schmeichel said afterwards it’s the best he’s ever seen and it’s hard to imagine anybody being able to produce better.
Sometimes keepers make loads of saves but they aren’t the most difficult and it’s just their lucky day. The ball just comes at them like they’re a magnet. This wasn’t that. Some of the saves Alisson made were from shots that were perfectly placed into the corner and he had no right to be reaching. He made nine saves in total I think. At least four of them were incredible and the others were excellent. I don’t remember too many routine ones, that’s for sure.
I think what puts it most in perspective is what happened at the other end. Donnarruma had absolutely fuck all to do, then the one shot he faces went in. I think he probably should save it, but it looks so much worse because of what Alisson had been doing at the other end. I was going to say that this is the difference that a great goalkeeper makes, but the Italian is one of the best in the world in his own right. There’s levels to it. They have a great goalkeeper, we have Alisson.
Let’s not sugarcoat it, we got fucking battered. They were too fast, too intense and too skilful for us in that first half. I thought we got to grips with it much better in the second half, even though Ali still had to keep pulling off saves. Most of those were from long range shots though, whereas in the first half they were just running through us from everywhere.
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