The Carabao Cup winners this year did not clearly keep up the Championship performance against Inter Milan in the Champions League second leg, losing out to a wonderful top bin strike by Lautaro Martinez in the 61st minute. Despite the chances created by Alexander-Arnold in the first half more than anyone on the pitch, the Reds did not deliver accordingly as Inter’s defence was tough to rip apart.
With Mohammed Salah’s post hit for the second time, the Reds seemed to be sluggish in their performance towards the end. Even after substituting Luiz Diaz on, the new promising Columbian striker signed this January, the squad was slow and underconfident compared to their Italian counterparts, with few players walking off the pitch with non-contact injuries.
Liverpool surely had more possession and control of the ball, along with most corners but with Van Dijk’s and Matip’s misses on the post, the game looked like it was going to be a long night at Anfield. Inter, however, took the game to their chest and was solid on their defence. They kept Liverpool on their toes by moving about and passing around a lot. A wild moment of a red card was witnessed in the 65th minute when Alexis Sanchez had blocked Thiago for the ball, sending the Chilean away for the remaining game. At that very moment, the spectators imagined the game going back to Inter’s style right after they scored but the red card after two minutes of scoring, pushed the game on Liverpool’s side.
“We deserved more in the first 75 minutes of the first leg”, said the Inter coach to SkySports,” then we conceded twice. We did our best at Anfield tonight, and we come out of these two games as a better side, strengthened.” Meanwhile, Klopp in the post-match interview admitted that his squad had a disappointing performance, not to mention, the league’s second leg, but added that the club is happy to qualify for the knockout stages.
