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ECHO Comment: "Fears of Witch-hunt Against Liverpool FC" part 3

Prevenger17 said:
Oh lads...
Click to expand...
On another day, in some other timeline, maybe Real Madrid could have won the 2021-22 Champions League final.

It would have been improbable in any universe, with the way Carlo Ancelotti’s team played, but you can imagine some alternate reality where the movements of bodies and balls are just a little less orderly, where football is a little less fair — who knows, maybe stranger things have happened in a world like that than a smash-and-grab 1-0 win.

But yesterday was not that day, and this is not that timeline.

Of course Liverpool are champions. That was never in doubt, not after Sadio Mane scored the fastest goal in Champions League final history 49 seconds in.

It wasn’t exactly a shock that the goal came from a high-pressing situation. Since the start of the group stage, Liverpool ranked third out of the 16 teams who ended up advancing to the knockout phase for how well they disrupted opponents’ build-up play. Real Madrid last night were no exception.

The staggered front five in Liverpool’s 4-3-3 high block denied access to Madrid’s midfield long enough that David Alaba turned and passed back to goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.

That was Mane’s trigger to jump forward from his new centre-forward role. He first closed down Courtois — who’s a rarity at the top of the game right now for his relatively clumsy feet — and then swerved to chase the keeper’s return ball to Alaba.



At the same time, Mohamed Salah hurried around to the other side of Alaba to deny the easy outlet pass to the left-back, Ferland Mendy. The pressing trap was sprung.

By the time Salah succeeded in squeezing Mendy against the sideline on the ball, Liverpool’s midfielders and their right-back, Trent Alexander-Arnold, had each jumped about five yards in front of any potential passing options.



That aggressive positioning not only blocked would-be receivers in Liverpool’s cover shadows (a fancy German name for the inaccessible space directly behind a defender), it also left each defender close enough to step up if Mendy tried to chip a pass over the guy in front of them — which sure enough, he did, overhitting a ball that Alexander-Arnold cut out.

Some teams’ first instinct when they win the ball suddenly like that is to pass backwards, secure possession and recover their shape before launching an attack. Liverpool did exactly the opposite, rushing straight for goal in transition like a good German-coached team, so that the opponents’ defence wouldn’t have time to get organised.

It took four seconds from the interception to a ball through the Madrid back line.



Alaba lunged to cut out the through-ball, and on another day maybe he would have got a toe to it. Instead, Mane tapped the ball around both him and Casemiro and fired a shot one-on-one against Courtois, who never stood a chance. 1-0. Liverpool fans, who had found their seats hours ahead of kick-off thanks to well-run security and streamlined crowd management, cheered.

Fifteen minutes later, they struck again.

This time it was the new and improved features of Liverpool’s passing game that bagged them a goal.

Thiago, distributing from his preferred deep-left role while moving to his right, played a comfortable diagonal out to Jordan Henderson on the right wing.

Henderson headed the ball back to Alexander-Arnold at the corner of the box. In past seasons, maybe Alexander-Arnold would have looked for a shallow cross here, but in this one he’s been getting into the cutback zone to set up higher-value chances.

Alexander-Arnold’s low cross found Salah, who put a shot on target with a post-shot expected goals value of 0.53 — more likely to score than not. On another day, maybe Courtois would have got a hand to it, but since football is a mathematically exact sport and the probabilities were against him, it’s only fair that he didn’t.

And so on it went for Madrid, who did manage a deserved goal involving Karim Benzema and some befuddling VAR metaphysics about what Fabinho did or didn’t intend to do, but Ancelotti’s team couldn’t seem to accomplish a whole lot else in this best of all possible worlds.

It didn’t help that their answer to Liverpool’s press was to drop Toni Kroos below Casemiro. It might have made sense, in theory, to link their best deep passer with their centre-backs instead of their worst one but, in practice, it kept stretching the midfield into a diagonal shape best described as, uh, avant-garde.


Meanwhile, Liverpool couldn’t stop scoring.

Sadio Mane’s low heater of a shot in the 21st minute grazed Courtois’ glove, bounced off the inside of the post, and made it three.



A Salah curler from his favourite zone at the top of the box slipped under Courtois’ reaching arm for the fourth.



Diogo Jota headed a ball across a gaping net to Salah, who had an easy tap-in at the other post.

Of course he scored that. This sport isn’t random. It’s not cruel.



When the final whistle blew, the score was Liverpool 5 Real Madrid 1 — a little wider than the xG difference, but only because Real Madrid were credited a big chance off a scuffed Fede Valverde shot that surprised everyone, including Vinicius Junior, who tripped over what might have been a tap-in at the back post.


No one could argue the result was unfair. Liverpool had the better of possession, field tilt, shots, and expected goals. They’d played the game in an organised 4-3-3 and pushed into Madrid’s half, while Ancelotti’s lopsided shape, meant to test the space behind Alexander-Arnold with the Vinicius-Benzema pairing, never really created much threat.



If you’re blessed with an active imagination, maybe you can conceive of some other universe where a game that lopsided might come out the other way.

But here in the real world, football — like life — is fair, and Liverpool have won their seventh Champions League, level with AC Milan for second-most ever behind only Madrid’s 13.

(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

John Muller is a Senior Writer for The Athletic UK. He writes about analytics and calls the sport soccer, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Follow John on Twitter @johnspacemuller


That could have been written by Michael Owen except he would have struggled to spell the first word.
 
rochdaleblue said:
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk

Gerrard, Alonso & why Klopp possesses 'best midfield in the world'

Liverpool fans famously once sang of having the best midfield in the world, but Jurgen Klopp's options are even stronger than the famous quartet
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk www.liverpoolecho.co.uk
Any half decent Kopite will tell you how bad their midfield is. But no apparently the echo says their current midfield is better then slippy, Alonso and masherano.
Click to expand...
I struggle to understand how a team with the best keeper in the world, the best CB ever, the best two full-backs in the world plus the best RS midfield ever plus the best forward line in the world didn't win the Premier League and the Champions League. It's really strange.
 

Toast said:
Now this is a chat I had earlier.
This RS side is legendary apparently.
So, I ask you, who out of this side gets into the best Liverpool side you’ve seen yourself ? I’m late 40’s btw.
I’d have Dalglish, Rush and Suarez over the current front 3.
I’d have Souness over Hendo all day long.
Hansen over that new fella.
Virgil may get a game over Lawro.
Nichol full back.
Staunton.
You get my drift; they ain’t all that you know.
Click to expand...
Defo they're best team, oh we won the league twice when they were about.
 
Saint Domingo said:
They’ve had a whole season of teams missing open nets against them. They’d have been down with Chelsea and Spurs for the top 4 battle if even a few of the many missed one on ones had gone in against them. They lucked out in both finals as well with Chelsea having some shocking finishing. Then you add in the corrupt refereeing. They can’t then whinge when a single game doesn’t go their way.
Click to expand...

Surely you know by now that no team has ever beaten them fairly and been the better side on the day. Every defeat in their history can be blamed on poor referring decisions, the wind blowing in the wrong direction or the grass being too long.
 

efcforever said:
Surely you know by now that no team has ever beaten them fairly and been the better side on the day. Every defeat in their history can be blamed on poor referring decisions, the wind blowing in the wrong direction or the grass being too long.
Click to expand...

You can add teams having a good
Goalkeeper onto the list of unfair things (although when Alisson wins them the game that’s different for some reason)
 
Saint Domingo said:
They’ve had a whole season of teams missing open nets against them. They’d have been down with Chelsea and Spurs for the top 4 battle if even a few of the many missed one on ones had gone in against them. They lucked out in both finals as well with Chelsea having some shocking finishing. Then you add in the corrupt refereeing. They can’t then whinge when a single game doesn’t go their way.
Click to expand...
Also the premier league is rank awful these days, the fact that these poor Man utd and Arsenal sides were in the race for a champions league spot highlights that.We got 72 points under Martinez and still didn't get it.
 
PITA said:
On another day, in some other timeline, maybe Real Madrid could have won the 2021-22 Champions League final.

It would have been improbable in any universe, with the way Carlo Ancelotti’s team played, but you can imagine some alternate reality where the movements of bodies and balls are just a little less orderly, where football is a little less fair — who knows, maybe stranger things have happened in a world like that than a smash-and-grab 1-0 win.

But yesterday was not that day, and this is not that timeline.

Of course Liverpool are champions. That was never in doubt, not after Sadio Mane scored the fastest goal in Champions League final history 49 seconds in.

It wasn’t exactly a shock that the goal came from a high-pressing situation. Since the start of the group stage, Liverpool ranked third out of the 16 teams who ended up advancing to the knockout phase for how well they disrupted opponents’ build-up play. Real Madrid last night were no exception.

The staggered front five in Liverpool’s 4-3-3 high block denied access to Madrid’s midfield long enough that David Alaba turned and passed back to goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.

That was Mane’s trigger to jump forward from his new centre-forward role. He first closed down Courtois — who’s a rarity at the top of the game right now for his relatively clumsy feet — and then swerved to chase the keeper’s return ball to Alaba.



At the same time, Mohamed Salah hurried around to the other side of Alaba to deny the easy outlet pass to the left-back, Ferland Mendy. The pressing trap was sprung.

By the time Salah succeeded in squeezing Mendy against the sideline on the ball, Liverpool’s midfielders and their right-back, Trent Alexander-Arnold, had each jumped about five yards in front of any potential passing options.



That aggressive positioning not only blocked would-be receivers in Liverpool’s cover shadows (a fancy German name for the inaccessible space directly behind a defender), it also left each defender close enough to step up if Mendy tried to chip a pass over the guy in front of them — which sure enough, he did, overhitting a ball that Alexander-Arnold cut out.

Some teams’ first instinct when they win the ball suddenly like that is to pass backwards, secure possession and recover their shape before launching an attack. Liverpool did exactly the opposite, rushing straight for goal in transition like a good German-coached team, so that the opponents’ defence wouldn’t have time to get organised.

It took four seconds from the interception to a ball through the Madrid back line.



Alaba lunged to cut out the through-ball, and on another day maybe he would have got a toe to it. Instead, Mane tapped the ball around both him and Casemiro and fired a shot one-on-one against Courtois, who never stood a chance. 1-0. Liverpool fans, who had found their seats hours ahead of kick-off thanks to well-run security and streamlined crowd management, cheered.

Fifteen minutes later, they struck again.

This time it was the new and improved features of Liverpool’s passing game that bagged them a goal.

Thiago, distributing from his preferred deep-left role while moving to his right, played a comfortable diagonal out to Jordan Henderson on the right wing.

Henderson headed the ball back to Alexander-Arnold at the corner of the box. In past seasons, maybe Alexander-Arnold would have looked for a shallow cross here, but in this one he’s been getting into the cutback zone to set up higher-value chances.

Alexander-Arnold’s low cross found Salah, who put a shot on target with a post-shot expected goals value of 0.53 — more likely to score than not. On another day, maybe Courtois would have got a hand to it, but since football is a mathematically exact sport and the probabilities were against him, it’s only fair that he didn’t.

And so on it went for Madrid, who did manage a deserved goal involving Karim Benzema and some befuddling VAR metaphysics about what Fabinho did or didn’t intend to do, but Ancelotti’s team couldn’t seem to accomplish a whole lot else in this best of all possible worlds.

It didn’t help that their answer to Liverpool’s press was to drop Toni Kroos below Casemiro. It might have made sense, in theory, to link their best deep passer with their centre-backs instead of their worst one but, in practice, it kept stretching the midfield into a diagonal shape best described as, uh, avant-garde.


Meanwhile, Liverpool couldn’t stop scoring.

Sadio Mane’s low heater of a shot in the 21st minute grazed Courtois’ glove, bounced off the inside of the post, and made it three.



A Salah curler from his favourite zone at the top of the box slipped under Courtois’ reaching arm for the fourth.



Diogo Jota headed a ball across a gaping net to Salah, who had an easy tap-in at the other post.

Of course he scored that. This sport isn’t random. It’s not cruel.



When the final whistle blew, the score was Liverpool 5 Real Madrid 1 — a little wider than the xG difference, but only because Real Madrid were credited a big chance off a scuffed Fede Valverde shot that surprised everyone, including Vinicius Junior, who tripped over what might have been a tap-in at the back post.


No one could argue the result was unfair. Liverpool had the better of possession, field tilt, shots, and expected goals. They’d played the game in an organised 4-3-3 and pushed into Madrid’s half, while Ancelotti’s lopsided shape, meant to test the space behind Alexander-Arnold with the Vinicius-Benzema pairing, never really created much threat.



If you’re blessed with an active imagination, maybe you can conceive of some other universe where a game that lopsided might come out the other way.

But here in the real world, football — like life — is fair, and Liverpool have won their seventh Champions League, level with AC Milan for second-most ever behind only Madrid’s 13.

(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

John Muller is a Senior Writer for The Athletic UK. He writes about analytics and calls the sport soccer, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Follow John on Twitter @johnspacemuller


That could have been written by Michael Owen except he would have struggled to spell the first word.
Click to expand...

Articles like this joke are missing one very important point.

A good attack wins you games

A good defence wins you titles


And real Madrid had a very good defence coupled with a top 3 ATG coach who had nullified klopp with Everton. They live in this fantasy world of possession and xg forgetting one other simple thing, it doesn't matter how you play, you just need to score.
 

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