The Brazilian forward delivered nothing overtly spectacular against Ajax but, in his brief time on the Anfield pitch, made his presence feltJürgen Klopp is too busy, bothered and generally bad-tempered these days to play silly games with selection just to prove a point. So it cannot be the case that he left Roberto Firmino on the bench for more than an hour against Ajax in an attempt to demonstrate exactly what it is he brings to the team that so many others seem unable to see.Nevertheless, for just about an hour at Anfield, that was what it looked like. Until a callow mistake by the visiting goalkeeper André Onana gifted Curtis Jones a neatly taken winner, Liverpool were, unusually, almost...
Liverpool centre-back remains a work in progress but his makeshift partnership with Fabinho just about kept Ajax out It was hardly a first touch that was going to inspire confidence. Barely 70 seconds had passed at the Amsterdam Arena when Joe Gomez took possession on the left-hand side of his penalty area. Attempting to shepherd the ball back to his goalkeeper, Gomez suddenly felt the breath of an Ajax forward at his shoulder and appeared to panic slightly, with Adrián required to sprint forward and smash the ball out for a throw-in, colliding with his 23-year-old teammate in the process.In the absence of the defensive colossus Virgil van Dijk it has fallen to the softly spoken south Londoner to step...
American has struggled since arriving for £58m but he made the late winner at Ajax as Chelsea defeated one of last season’s semi-finalistsThere were 86 minutes on the clock when Christian Pulisic decided it was time to silence all the noise about his slow start to life since joining Chelsea for £58m. The American winger had oozed menace after replacing Willian midway through the second half and did not look like a player struggling to cope with the unenviable weight of expectation when the opportunity arrived for him to deliver the incision missing from every other creative player on the pitch.It had been a frustrating night for the forwards on both sides. Dusan Tadic and Hakim Ziyech were ineffective for...
Frenkie de Jong is unlikely to be the last of this team to depart in the summer after their Champions League exploits“Every year one or two big names leave,” acknowledged Michael van Praag, the Ajax president, in March 1997. “It is sad, especially for me. But we are used to it. There is absolutely no panic.” More than two decades on from the last time the four-times European Cup winners reached the semi-finals, the faces may have changed but there is still no hiding from the bald truth in the Ajax boardroom. Their chief executive, Edwin van der Sar – the goalkeeper in the famous 1995 Champions League final victory against Milan and in the defeat to Juventus 12 months...
The humiliation by Ajax led to much mirth at Madrid’s expense but four Champions League crowns in five years is a period of dominance that history will look upon kindlyPlease allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste. I’ve been around for … well, quite a long time as it happens, most notably as champions of Europe for the last thousand days, an era of oddly room-temperature dominance that has now come to an end.The period of public mourning has been notably brief. Instead Real Madrid’s ejection from the Champions League on Tuesday night was greeted not by tributes and tears, but with a chorus of crowing delight. Sympathy for the devil’s Meringues? There’s not much...