Liverpool needed to do something uncomfortably close to perfect on Wednesday night at Anfield, and they very nearly managed it.
Trailing 1-0 from the first leg in Istanbul, Arne Slot’s side produced a 4-0 win over Galatasaray to advance to the Champions League quarter-finals on a 4-1 aggregate scoreline, booking a meeting with defending European champions Paris Saint-Germain in the process. The goals came from Dominik Szoboszlai in the 25th minute, Hugo Ekitike in the 51st, Ryan Gravenberch two minutes later, and Mohamed Salah in the 62nd.
The result was the right one, but the path to it was messier than the final scoreline suggests. Liverpool were one missed penalty away from going into half-time still level on aggregate, with Salah’s panenka attempt saved by Ugurcan Cakir in first-half stoppage time after Szoboszlai had been brought down inside the box.
That moment, had it played out differently, would have defined a very different second half than the one that unfolded.
It was Szoboszlai’s cool finish from Alexis Mac Allister’s corner on 25 minutes that levelled the aggregate. The Hungarian had been Liverpool’s most consistent performer throughout a troubled domestic campaign, and his ability to deliver in the moments that count reflects a resilience that the team as a whole has struggled to replicate week to week. The second-half blitz, three goals in 17 minutes, was the kind of football that briefly made Anfield feel like the ground it was twelve months ago when Liverpool were running away with the Premier League.
Galatasaray’s night was further complicated when Victor Osimhen, their chief attacking threat, sustained a forearm injury in an early collision with Ibrahima Konate and failed to emerge for the second half. A sold-out, partisan 61,000-strong crowd ensured the atmosphere never let the Turkish side settle, and without Osimhen, they had nothing close to the creative resources required to threaten a comeback. Their goalkeeper Cakir made six saves over the course of the night, many of them remarkable, but the tide was simply too strong to hold.
Salah’s goal in the 62nd minute carried extra meaning beyond the three points. The Egyptian’s curling left-foot strike from outside the box became his 50th goal in the Champions League, making him the first African player to reach that mark in the competition’s history. Slot described the performance as “almost the perfect game,” and from a European perspective, it very nearly was — 32 shots on the night, complete control of territory, and a sustained press that Galatasaray simply had no answer to.
The reaction from Szoboszlai after the final whistle captured both the satisfaction of the moment and the scale of what comes next. “Today, we showed the right direction where we want to go and what we want to show everybody,” he told TNT Sports. “I watched [PSG] play against Chelsea yesterday, they didn’t become a worse team than last season. But we showed today that we are able to do everything.” PSG eliminated Liverpool on penalties in last season’s last 16 in a tie that went to the absolute wire. This time, Liverpool face them with the wounds of a difficult domestic campaign fresh and the pressure of needing the European run to justify Slot’s continued presence in the job.
The broader picture for English clubs in Europe is one of mixed signals. Of the six Premier League sides that entered the round of 16, only Liverpool and Arsenal made it through. Chelsea were eliminated by PSG across an 8-2 aggregate, Manchester City went out to Real Madrid, and Tottenham exited to Atletico Madrid despite winning Wednesday’s second leg. The concentration of exits underlines how much European football’s balance of power has shifted, even as Liverpool demonstrated at Anfield that English football at its best still has the capacity to produce nights like this.
Liverpool’s domestic situation remains precarious, sitting fifth in the Premier League and having drawn 1-1 with a struggling Tottenham side at Anfield the previous weekend. Szoboszlai himself addressed the crowd’s restlessness in the days before Wednesday’s match, noting that fans leaving before the final whistle during league games “doesn’t help us at all.” The tension between what Liverpool are in Europe and what they have been in the Premier League this season is one of the more fascinating contradictions in English football at the moment, and the PSG quarter-final will define how it is ultimately remembered.
About the Author
