Liverpool 3-2 Atletico Madrid: Debut for Isak as Arne Slot’s side grab yet another late winner
Until the delightfully entertaining football took centre stage, the Liverpool team news dominated the headlines. Alexander Isak, the £125m deadline day signing of the Premier League champions, made his first start. Arne Slot had promised before the game that he would not play the full 90 minutes.
He wasn’t ready, said Slot. Nor had he been ready the last time he was expected, which was the earliest possible time he could have featured, against Burnley at Turf Moor on Sunday.
Isak had missed all of pre-season, being on strike at Newcastle and all, his only appearance in a football match since May the 20-minute cameo for Sweden during the international break.
Once the football began talk of the Swede was briefly put away as Liverpool threatened to overwhelm Atletico Madrid. It took only four minutes for Arne Slot’s side to register their first goal. The architect was Mohamed Salah, whose freekick ricocheted off Andy Robertson’s calf and wrongfooted Jan Oblak.
While Atletico struggled to digest that setback, Liverpool heaped more misery on them just two minutes later, Salah again running onto Ryan Gravenberch’s pass, holding off several Atletico defenders as he bundled his way to the edge of the six yard box and then whammed the ball in at the far post.
Atletico did a great job of digging themselves out of the hole, a deeply underwhelming start that saw them concede 75 per cent of the possession to Liverpool in the opening ten minutes continuing to brighten as the game aged, even if their attempts on goal rolled harmlessly into Alisson’s arms.
It was a game in which it looked like both sides could score at any time, at least until they were let down by the poor final touch. They plotted endlessly in midfield, players poking for holes here and there. A penalty awarded to Liverpool after the half hour for a handball was waved away when the referee consulted VAR and saw there was nothing in it.
As the first half drew to a close and Isak had had a few minutes in his tank he began to liven up. In one instance, he collected the ball, turned in a flash and scooped it goalwards but it went wide. In another, he collected it in around the same area of the box, turned again and got his shot away, but Oblak was able to drop down and stop it without too much effort.
Then just before the break Atletico halved the lead when Giacomo Raspadori’s ball in was toe-poked by Marcos Llorente, beyond Ibrahima Konate and Alisson and into the net. Llorente, the same man who scored a brace against Liverpool to draw Atletico level from two goals down in 2020.
Several chances would come for Slot’s side on both sides of the break, but they were profligate. Dominik Szoboszlai and Florian Wirtz first got in each other’s way, before Wirtz stuck his foot in and shifted the ball across to Salah, but the Egyptian’s strike could only pound on the crossbar. In another very similar opportunity Hugo Ekitike blasted over the bar.
Then came Llorente’s fated second on minute 81. Atletico’s surge came down the left and Giuliano Simeone’s shot, deflected by Konate, floated towards Llorente. He waited, and as the ball arrived he unleashed a knee level volley, which took a big deflection off Alexis Mac Allister and flew beyond Alisson.
Liverpool threw men forward and jostled for another late winner, sending wave after wave of pressure on the Atletico goal. Ibrahima Konate couldn’t properly connect with a header from a corner kick five minutes from time. Three minutes later Ekitike’s attempt kissed the wrong side of the side netting. Salah’s delivery drew a huge gasp from the crowd but Jan Oblak was able to dash out and palm the ball away.
But then with seconds to go captain Virgil van Dijk outmanoeuvred his marker Nahuel Molina to get off the ground and head in from a Szoboszlai corner.
The game was so open by then there was still the possibility of another goal. Ekitike blasted over from in front of the six-yard box when he could have made it 4-2. Then Atletico’s Alexander Sorloth couldn’t direct his header properly to the side, and Alisson was able to easily save.
