It was undeniably a thoroughly engaging encounter between two colossal teams that clearly demonstrated a clash of styles, strategic systems and uniquely contrasting attitudes when Liverpool took on Atletico Madrid in the return leg of their last 16 tie of the Champions League last night at the Reds’ Anfield home turf.
At the end of the night, it all boiled down to the individual performances of the two goalkeepers at Anfield which determined the final outcome.
At one end Jan Oblak underlined his reputation as one of the world’s premier shot-stoppers as he repeatedly denied Liverpool.
At the other, a decisive mistake by Adrian proved costly causing many to ponder on how the final outcome could have turned out had Alisson been there instead.
Oblak was the first of the two to concede a goal when he was beaten by Gini Wijnaldum’s first-half header and there was little to keep out Roberto Firmino’s close-range follow-up finish in extra-time. But otherwise he did come through with nine brilliant saves which kept Atletico in contention throughout.
Atletico Madrid were able to capitalise with the help of an unfortunate blunder from Adrian in extra-time just 167 seconds after it certainly looked like Firmino had sent Liverpool into the quarter-finals when the Reds’ keeper skewed a pass straight to Joao Felix who set up Marcos Llorente to score from distance.
Adrian slipped as he was about to dive to make the save and the resulting error was sufficient cause for the Atletico players to celebrate jubilantly.
Atletico set up with a 4-4-2 by Simeone but were unable to have a single shot on target in the first half and only managed to scrape up six in the entire 120 minutes of play. Yet in the end they netted three times which was what mattered most.
“We saw all the goals we conceded, we shouldn’t concede these kind of goals,” Klopp said post-match. Klopp was also quick to come to the defence of his goalkeeper. “We don’t blame him for a second. He has saved us in so many moments since he has been here. He has had super performances. This goal didn’t help but that’s how it is.”
“It had an impact but it was one goal. We conceded two more goals after that. We didn’t score the goals. There were plenty of reasons why we didn’t go through.”
“Liverpool have put an awful lot into that performance and it was a very good performance,” said former Liverpool midfielder Neil Mellor on Sky Sports News. “They created chance after chance. Oblak is one of the best goalkeepers in the world, and he showed that tonight.
“The best goalkeeper in the world was missing for Liverpool and they missed him tonight. I think that was the big difference. Liverpool were missing Alisson. If he was in goal, would Liverpool have progressed?”
Now, how does one answer a question like that?