Liverpool 3 Atletico Madrid 2: Match Review

Neil Atkinson’s post-match overview for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 3 Atletico 2 within the 2025-2026 Champions League…

IT ENDS IN A marvellous and essential win. It ought to have been a snug one. It may have been Liverpool’s best efficiency since February. It must have been a beautiful evening to adore them.

Nevertheless it turns into an evening of blood and thunder, of braveness, an evening of Diego Simeone getting despatched off after “struggling” Anfield. Diego, pal, at present we’re struggling Anfield each week. Be a part of the membership.

They’ve such spirit it appears reductive to say it, however spirit alloyed with high quality takes you such a great distance in something you wish to do. These are all footballers you’d gladly be within the trenches with, footballers blissful to be within the trenches with one another.

A mildly regarding thought persists that perhaps they benefit from the trenches just a little an excessive amount of. Let’s shake our head on that for now. Let it go. Interrogate it one other day.

As an alternative dwell on their capacity to push and discover a approach and their capacity for the best way to be about sheer high quality, not fortune or brute drive. It’s a magnificent header from the captain towards a person who can argue his case as the perfect pure goalkeeper in Europe. It’s unstoppable. It’s magnetic. It’s Virgil van Dijk and he’s at present the footballer the world revolves round greater than every other.

Pulling it again to the beginning, Liverpool are a flurry. Each fullbacks are leaping ahead to shut angles, one will get a objective and the opposite batters his man. The speculation is that is Liverpool’s fourth hardest recreation of eight however you wouldn’t suppose it.

They’re first to all the pieces and earlier than you verify the clock Mo Salah has a objective and an help. The help is unlikely however the objective is the person personified. From my seat it doesn’t look clear however after the actual fact you see Salah has scored one in every of Salah’s objectives. Holding off males, all shark-like motion and dead-eyed certainty. He has proven himself but once more to like the event.

He’s the perfect model of himself. Which implies he’s the perfect model of a Liverpool nice. What a factor to be.

There’s a second put up objective, when Van Dijk has a second with him the place this flash hits me:

These lads wish to win the Champions League greater than you. These lads know that is it. Understanding that helps.

Tonight is a superb instance of how within the floor and out of doors the bottom so typically offers you such completely different views.

Within the floor I used to be staggered by each objectives Liverpool conceded. Exterior of the bottom I used to be shocked by how neither objective needs to be given.

The primary Liverpool do sleepwalk into just a little. The Reds had been glorious from about 35 to 43. They’d battered Atleti. Then they simply lose one thing, some edge and our opponents have been round each block.

However seeing it again, I simply can’t consider it’s given. Alisson Becker’s line of sight is completely undermined.

The second comes after the lads must make it three and arguably 4. That is a kind of video games which must go 3-0, which must go 3-1 after which 4-1. This isn’t a kind of video games the place Liverpool are floating. That was Newcastle. This isn’t a kind of video games the place Liverpool are unnecessarily dangerous. That was Bournemouth.

That is, in isolation, a kind of video games the place Liverpool deserve to simply win and don’t need to should take any drugs.

There have been three hopes:

Hope One is you look again on these 5 video games on the finish of the marketing campaign and say “they make a tonne of sense for those who simply sprinkle them by way of the yr”.

Hope Two is it is a aspect figuring out the best way to assault devastatingly; who’re on the verge of it and say “this was hanging in earlier than it hit”.

Hope Three is “they simply win late perpetually.”

Immediately, with Alexander Isak’s debut, Hope Two feels the strongest of the hopes. The likeliest. He improves as the sport wears on. He finds pockets and enjoys battles and appears like a person at dwelling. It should take a little bit of time however now we have time so long as we get factors.

Immediately we glance good and play properly. Immediately Gravenberch and Szoboszlai seem like a viable, athletic drive to be reckoned with. Immediately Florian Wirtz exhibits moments of each brilliance and genius and we should always all make certain it is going to come.

Immediately Liverpool had been Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool. He claims factors, night and symbolism. He leaves Diego Simeone raging, us believing in all that’s seen and unseen and the march being earlier than us. We and so they consider we are able to win this. We and they’re proper to.

Steps. All the things is steps. Saturday is one other step. It’d be fabulous to see that one taken, the one the place Liverpool don’t want a late winner, the one the place the category tells. It will be good for that to be the case.

However you are taking any win. You at all times did. You at all times will.

And tonight they had been fortunate it was 3-2. One other loopy win. One other good Liverpool efficiency.

Neil