Arne Slot says he knew it was coming. But not even the Liverpool boss would have thought that Alisson Becker and Harvey Elliott’s heroics would pan out entirely as they did.
Alisson produced save after save as Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembele peppered his goal but no PSG player could find a way through. Then, almost inexplicably, in the 87th minute, Darwin Nunez teed up Elliott, who found the back of the net with the only shot on target by a Liverpool player all game.
“We were not under par,” Slot insisted during his post-match press conference. “It’s purely the quality of Paris Saint-Germain and the way they’ve played this whole season.
“I can say it one more time, all of the underlying stats show you that they were the best team in Europe until now except for the league table. But they’ve had Arsenal, they’ve played Bayern Munich, they’ve played Atletico Madrid and they’ve played Manchester City, and they still have the best underlying stats.
“They showed today — I already knew it, but the players saw it today as well, and our fans and all of England — that Luis Enrique made an incredible team here after three [transfer] windows. So much pace, so much work rate, so much quality in the midfield, how they handle the ball.
(Image: Ryan Pierse – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
“It was an unbelievable challenge for us to get away here with a result and we know it’s going to be a hard one in a week. It is a very good result for us. But we also felt the quality of Paris Saint-Germain and I knew it before: 10 times in a row they scored goal after goal after goal [and have] incredible pace with the wingers.”
Slot insisted in various post-game interviews that his team had done well and Liverpool did defend to a high level at times. Trent Alexander-Arnold, considering the criticism he often gets, deserves to be praised.
And while Slot wouldn’t have known exactly how the 90 minutes would play out, the Liverpool boss was proven right about PSG. He said before the game that the French side would have most of the possession and that was certainly true. He has also long insisted that the French champion would show its true level.
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As the Dutchman mentioned, Enrique has done an excellent job. Last season, when it became clear that Kylian Mbappe would finally be leaving, he promised that PSG would get better without him. Having moved on from Lionel Messi and Neymar too, it seemed like a bold statement.
The Spaniard was right, though. Mbappe, Messi and Neymar scored goals by the bucketload. This version of PSG, however, as Liverpool just found out, is a much more effective team unit, whose pressing and technical ability in midfield, in particular, stood out.
If it does exit the Champions League, it won’t be because of a flaky mentality as it so often has been before. It is considerably better than the old version of PSG — but just not quite a match for Alisson.
