Ugh...'Bele getting the kinks out of his system...all the space and time, flubs it high preseason style
Wow, Dembele! Way to choke on the 4-0. FT: 3-0. Suarez, Messi, Messi. 600 club goals. Clean sheet. We can lose 2-0 at Anfield and advance to the final. If we get an away goal, they need 5.
And with them playing knowing that they need 3 goals at least just to tie things up, I believe that we most definitely will get one at Anfield.
Interesting: Guardian MBM after game comment A little observation: As Liverpool took the corner that led to that final Barcelona breakaway, Jurgen Klopp ordered Alisson, a vision in fluorescent pink, to venture up the field and cause some havoc in the penalty area. The Brazilian goalkeeper refused to do so. While we can’t say for sure what would have happened, had he done so, he almost certainly would not have been on hand to save Dembele’s pathetically feeble shot that turned out to be the last kick of the game.
Now we just need Valencia and Frankfurt to win tomorrow... In Europa ville and it will be 0-4 for the PL, in first legs at least.
3-0 Liverpool is a truly scary team; they are bigger, faster, thankfully we did limit their chances by stacking that box and waiting to pounce. They should've had a goal or 2. We couldn't get up the midfield for a good 15-20 minutes in the 2nd half. -Vidal winning aerial battles left and right. THAT was MOTM stuff for me, especially when he went into Coutinho's position on offense. -Ter Stegen is a really really really underrated GK...it's cool keep it that way, hopefully the opponents can keep thinking it's just Messi this, Messi that -Coutinho started off OK, but man that second half when they started putting the press on, he lost 2 straight balls, and was subbed out -Against this super high-press, Dembele had 3 straight clear chances after coming in the 90th minute. I think he would've done his damage (scored at least one more chance) had he had the chance to come in the 80th or even 85th minute. Like last year against Roma, EV waited a bit too long.
Regarding mats.. during the last two years he's second to none as a goalkeeper / sweeperkeeper and how is he underrated? Don't know anybody with a different pov in this case.
Sometimes it feels like there are no more superlatives left. Seriously, what else can be said about this little guy with the No 10 shirt and magic in his feet other than to ask, perhaps, whether these are the occasions when Lionel Messi buries any lingering debate about whether Pelé or Diego Maradona, or any of the others, have ever played this sport any better? Not a chance they did. That's the opening paragraph to the Guardian's write up of the game: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/01/barcelona-liverpool-champions-league-match-report
That was sort of the essence of Klopp's after game interview, as summarized in Guardian's mbm: Jurgen Klopp speaks ... Speaking to BT Sport, Liverpool’s manager sounds disappointed, but philosophical. “Football is like this,” he says. “It’s about scoring goals and they scored three goals and we scored none. The performance was great and the boys were really good. I’m really happy with the performance but I’m not happy with the result. You don’t get grades in this game, you only get a hard result. On the subject of his team’s profligacy in front of goal. “What can I say?” he asks. “It’s easy to talk about goals, but how we created the chances was outstanding. How we caused them problems was outstanding. How we played it - I don’t know if we can play much better.” He has a little grumble at the play-acting of some of Barcelona’s more experienced players (yes you, Luis). “We’re 3-0 down but let’s recover and go to Newcastle,” he says. “The game is over, but whatever I say will not change the result. We will play again and see what happens. We have not made our lives easier.”
Van Dijk on Messi : "We didn't lose to Barca, we lost to the greatest player of all time. No one can stop him, not even me."