Champions League: Liverpool vs Barcelona semi-final, Reds score stunning win
Liverpool have scored the greatest comeback in Champions League history to reach the final.
Liverpool delivered the greatest in a long line of famous comebacks to reach the Champions League final, beating Lionel Messi’s Barcelona 4-0 at Anfield to overturn a three-goal deficit from the first leg.
Divock Origi scored twice, either side of goals by half-time substitute Georginio Wijnaldum early in the second half, to send Liverpool into its second straight final and set up a meeting with either Ajax or Tottenham on June 1.
It was only the third time in the history of the European Cup that a team came from three goals down after the first leg of a semi-final and progressed to the final, after Panathinaikos in 1970-71 and Barcelona in 1985-86.
“Once again we showed that everything is possible in football,” said Wijnaldum. “I was really angry at the manager that he put me on the bench but I had to do something to help the team when I came on.
“We believe it from the start. People from outside (the club), they thought it was not possible, but we still managed to do this.”
No team had done it in the Champions League era.
The comeback was all the more unlikely given that Liverpool was without two of its first-choice forward line, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino.
Instead, it was Origi — the scorer of the crucial fourth goal in the 79th minute — who made the seemingly impossible, possible. And it needed some remarkable ingenuity from Trent Alexander-Arnold, who pretended to walk away from taking a corner before quickly spinning round and sending in a low cross as Barcelona’s players dawdled.
Origi swept in the finish.
“I think it was just instinctive. It was one of those moments where you see the opportunity,” Alexander-Arnold said of his quick-thinking.
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp said he didn’t even see what had happened at the corner.
“We had to be serious. But we needed to be cheeky as well,” Klopp said. “Barcelona defend predictable things well but you need to be unpredictable at moments.
“I saw the ball flying in the net, I didn’t see the corner. (Substitute) Ben Woodburn looked at me and said ‘What happened’?”
Given the opposition, a team featuring arguably the greatest ever soccer player in Messi, this will likely rank as Liverpool’s greatest European performance, rivalling the comeback from three goals down against AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final.
There was also the 3-1 win over Saint-Etienne in the 1977 European Cup and the 4-3 win from 2-0 down against Borussia Dortmundin the 2016 Europa League quarter-finals.
This is Special â¤ï¸ #ANFIELD #Liverpoolfc #LIVBAR pic.twitter.com/DP4UzJitS9
— Anything Liverpool (@AnythingLFC_) May 7, 2019
For Barcelona, it was the second year in a row that it let a three-goal lead slip, having beaten Roma 4-1 at home in the quarter-finals in 2018 before losing the return leg 3-0 to go out.
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp had delivered a stirring speech on the eve of the game, telling his players to “fail in a beautiful way” if they were to get eliminated.
They took that to heart.
Klopp: ‘It’s unbelievable’
It was all too much for the always passionate Klopp as the German let his emotions run wild in an entertaining post-match interview.
Speaking to BT Sport, Klopp said: “It’s 10 past 10, most of your children are probably in bed but these boys are f..king talented giants. It’s unbelievable.
“Fine me if you want. I’m not native so I don’t have better words for it.
“The whole game. The whole performance was too much. It was overwhelming. I watched in my life so many football games but I can’t remember many like this.
“Winning is already difficult but winning with a clean sheet? We played against maybe the best team in world. I don’t know how the boys did it.”
Klopp saluted his spirited players for refusing to accept they were out after losing the first leg by such a large margin.
“It’s the best phase of football,” he said. “There are more important things in the world. But creating this emotional atmosphere together is so special. It’s all about the players.”
“The mix of potential and unbelievable heart is just a mix I never saw before. You have to be confident in a game like this.
“I saw James Milner crying after the game on the pitch, it means so much to all of us.”
Salah, Liverpool’s top scorer who missed the game as he followed protocols after a concussion, entered the stadium before kick-off wearing a T-shirt bearing the message: “Never Give Up.”
Then teammate Andrew Robertson set the tone on the field, pushing Messi’s head with two hands while the Barcelona forward was on the ground after an early challenge.
Fabinho followed that up with a crunching tackle on Luis Suarez, who was jeered relentlessly by Liverpool fans at the ground he graced for 3 and a half years.
A goal was needed to really give a shaken Barca team the jitters and it arrived after seven minutes, with Origi tapping into an empty net after goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen could only parry out a shot by Jordan Henderson.
“Who’s going to the final? We are. That’s all that matters,” said Robertson. “I’ve said so many times this season but what a team.
“We believe. People wrote us off, but we believed if we got off to a good start we could do it.”
Barcelona already looked rattled, with Suarez living up to his role as the player opposition fans love to hate. In one incident, the striker flicked his boot back into the right knee of Robertson as they ran along together. Robertson needed treatment and was substituted at halftime.
The player who came on for Robertson — Wijnaldum — made an almost instant impact, making it 2-0 by sweeping home a low cross from Alexander-Arnold. Two minutes later, he made another run into the area and met a cross from Xherdan Shaqiri with a firm header into the corner past a flat-footed Ter Stegen.
It was bedlam inside Anfield, the scene of so many of these famous fightbacks. Philippe Coutinho, a former Liverpool player like Suarez, was substituted for Nelson Semedo after an ineffective game — his tracking back left a lot to be desired — and Barca’s game quickly improved, the team exerting more control.
Liverpool’s players might also have wondered how to approach the game with the score tied on aggregate.
Then came the coup de grace after cheeky play by Alexander-Arnold. Origi scored and Barcelona had no answer.
Liverpool (4-3-3) Alisson Becker; Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joel Matip, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson; James Milner, Fabinho, Jordan Henderson (capt); Xherdan Shaqiri, Divock Origi, Sadio Mane Coach: Jurgen Klopp (GER)
Barcelona (4-3-3) Marc-Andre ter Stegen; Sergi Roberto, Gerard Pique, Clement Lenglet, Jordi Alba; Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakitic, Arturo Vidal; Lionel Messi (capt), Luis Suarez, Philippe Coutinho Coach: Ernesto Valverde (ESP)
Referee: Cuneyt Cakir
Additional reporting: AAP
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