A first European night underneath the Anfield lights of the newly reformatted and repackaged Champions League. In sensory terms, it was an evening that gave with one hand but took with the other.
The football on offer, though did manage to look past the uncertainties of the new UEFA world order to entertain in a pleasure and pain sort of way.
For those of us of the First Division and European Cup generation, it is quite amusing to watch the Premier League and Champions League generation lose their shit over UEFA switching the supermarket aisles around when it comes to their flagship club tournament.
Now you know how it feels like to have your version of football messed around with.
That said, there is an undeniable ludicrousness at play when it comes to the new landscape of the Champions League, given it will take 288 group games to eliminate just 12 teams, with eight ‘group’ games per club rather than six.
Extra ticket money to be found down the back of the sofa for match-going supporters, increases in sports subscriptions for those watching on television and even fewer blank midweeks in which we can all draw a deep breath and relax.
More genuinely is less when it comes to football unless you are in control of the monetary printing presses that UEFA own. Thank God they saved us all from a European Super League, eh?
I mean, imagine being that team and fanbase who will be going into group stage ‘matchday eight’ in January on the back of having lost their first seven games.
Enthusiasm will have long since been depleted. Good luck to TNT Sports and Amazon Prime giving the hard sell on a lot of those later fixtures, games that will increasingly mean absolutely nothing to at least one of the two teams.
Some things change, some stay the same
Yet, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
Pre-match, Zadok the Priest kicked in and the boos and whistles rained down from the Anfield terraces, Liverpool supporters reassuringly unwilling to let UEFA forget their gross culpability for the events outside the Stade de France before, during, and after the 2022 Champions League final. No change there.
Opposing supporters came in numbers and were a credit to themselves, respectful of Anfield traditions, scarves held aloft during the singing of You’ll Never Walk Alone and giving their team passionate backing throughout.
No change there, and it is always refreshing not to be assailed by the usual medley of poverty, stereotype, and tragedy chanting repertoires of most domestic visitors.
Heavy going at times. But sometimes all you need is a Mo moment. Think the ref must have won a competition or something
— Jeff Goulding (@ShanklysBoys1) October 2, 2024
Erratic officialdom from the referee you say? No change their either, with the wonderful Jeff Goulding musing on social media after the game that perhaps Nikola Dabanovic had won a competition or something to get the gig of being in charge of the whistle.
On a night when Ibrahima Konate was flashed a yellow card for the offence of being obstructed on the edge of the Bologna penalty area, then Jeff’s theory is entirely plausible.
From my perspective in the Upper Main Stand, it reminded me a lot of that 1990s sitcom, ‘The Brittas Empire’, of which I could never truly figure out whether it was funny or not.
The central plot character becomes increasingly pompous and inept as the episode progresses, leaving you the option of either suspending your bubbling sense of disbelief at this pound shop Fawlty Towers in a sports centre tribute act, or to reach for the remote control.
When you’re a captive audience in a football ground, there are no remote controls that come with the seats though.
The brilliance of Mo Salah
On the pitch, there were helpings of the good, the bad, and the ugly, with Mo Salah indulging in all three categories. His evening swinging from an assist for the opening goal to a string of loose balls and poor passing decisions, to a peach of a goal of his own.
A contractual stalemate still permeates between Salah and the club, with regard to the football he will be playing and in whose shirt it will be beyond next May.
There are certainly louder noises being made in the vicinity I sit at Anfield, in terms of resentment over his fluctuating form, yet there the lad still is, making the biggest of contributions to games for Liverpool. Still invaluable, still irreplaceable.
Give him the contract he wants, the keys to the city, the right to lead his sheep through the city centre, an honorary diploma, a cloak, a mortarboard hat, and an evening in his honour at St George’s Hall.
In all honesty, he deserves the lot. Don’t be a crank by wasting groans on him when he doesn’t pull off a piece of magic he tries to conjure up. He might be gone soon, just enjoy the fella; he has been and continues to be a blessing to Anfield.
The real negatives of the evening revolved around carelessness at the back handing Bologna openings that they shouldn’t have been gifted, reliant as we were a fair few times on Alisson pawing away all goalbound efforts, while Darwin Nunez didn’t do enough to ease Arne Slot‘s occasionally public doubts about him.
Plenty of positives were on offer too, though, with Ryan Gravenberch continuing to blossom, Dominik Szoboszlai putting in one of his best performances in a Liverpool shirt, and Alexis Mac Allister chipping in with his first Champions League goal.
As a midfield trio, they are beginning to find greater cohesion game-on-game.
Next up, Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Saturday, before the latest international break kicks in. The visit of Chelsea looms beyond, along with the next Champions League task away to RB Leipzig.
With no entirely blank midweek until mid-November, the rest of October is certainly going to test the resolve of Slot not to rotate his team selections.
Up the Reds.
