Liverpool Come From Two Down to Beat Villarreal 4-3
Liverpool were two goals down to Villarreal at Anfield on Tuesday night and still won 4-3 in the Champions League, keeping their 100% record in the competition. Alexis Mac Allister scored twice, Ronald Araújo scored on the stroke of half-time and Florian Wirtz got his first goal of the season.
The home side were poor for the first half-hour. Virgil van Dijk misjudged a long ball from Renato Veiga, and then headed another one straight to Georges Mikautadze, who controlled it and rolled it under Alisson. Van Dijk apologised to his team-mates.
Mac Allister began the recovery by heading in a Kostas Tsimikas corner. Then Rio Ngumoha, who is 18, clipped a cross to the far post from another Tsimikas corner. Cardona let the ball bounce behind him, and Araújo, on loan at the club, headed it in for the second successive week in the Champions League. The equaliser came with the last touch of the first half.
Ngumoha makes the difference
Araújo came off at the interval. Head coach Andoni Iraola wanted Ryan Gravenberch at right-back and Wirtz back in the forward line, and Liverpool improved vastly after the restart.
Ngumoha unravelled the Villarreal defence and set up Mac Allister's second, Liverpool's third. Wirtz then drilled a left-footed finish inside the far corner after Tsimikas and Cody Gakpo had created space for him.
Tani Oluwaseyi volleyed in a third for Villarreal from an Ayoze Pérez cross, which made for a nervous finish, but Liverpool held on.
Iraola had rested Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Bradley Barcola. It was a fourth game in 10 days for Wirtz and Barcola, and Isak's workload was being managed after a thigh injury. "Rio didn't have it easy tonight," Iraola said. "They demanded a lot of him defensively with their left-back attacking but he was very difficult to stop." He also said: "We started too relaxed and we were too relaxed at 4-2."
It was the first competitive meeting between Iraola and Villarreal coach Iñigo Pérez, who are old Athletic Bilbao team-mates. "We weren't able to handle the emotion tonight," Pérez said.
Source: The Guardian