Real Madrid last night destroyed Liverpool at Anfield by 2-5 in the first leg of the UEFA Champions League round of 16. Liverpool has been unable to triumph over the La Liga giant in the last seven competitive meetings between both clubs. Liverpool last beat Madrid in 2009 in their 4-0 raid on Los Blancos at Anfield. With away goals abolished, Madrid still stands a better chance to qualify ahead of Liverpool.
Darwin Nunez opened the scoring chat for Liverpool scoring just 4 minutes into the encounter. Salah struck another in the game after 10 minutes to give Liverpool a 2-0 lead. Vinicius JR scored a brace, Benzema scored a brace and Eder Militao also scored to earn Madrid the emphatic victory.
On the performance last night, Klopp said this in the press conference:
I really think everything was pretty obvious tonight; I think we gave all five goals away and that means we could have done better there, but they were all obviously different. The start in the game, in our situation where we are, it is really important that we see positive steps – and I think the first half was, besides the two goals we conceded, the best we’ve played for probably the whole season. I liked it a lot. OK, the second goal, we cannot defend better because it is a slapstick [moment], but it equalled pretty much our second goal that we scored. The first goal we conceded we have to defend better, there were enough players around, nobody puts a foot in and stuff like this. It’s very tight and it is just a world-class moment from Vinicius then as well, but I think it is obvious we can defend it better.
Half-time, [it was] rather positive, to be honest. You think, ‘OK, this happened… we have to play in this and that space, if we keep doing that they will have problems…’ and then we start with conceding the third goal, which was a horrible goal and today it was pretty much the game-changer. We lost the momentum in that moment and never really got it back. In the first half we could have scored a third one, we had our moments, we were a bit unlucky with the scrappy situation in the six-yard box. In the second half, the game was the game Real Madrid wanted to play. Both of the other goals they scored, one is deflected and they are not really well defended, to be honest. We lose the ball in the wrong moment, which is obviously a massive problem against Real Madrid with the counter-attacking threat they have and that’s how it came to the result. That’s it.
