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And that’s all from me. It’s been memorable. Thanks for sharing it with me. Bye!
Liverpool player ratings
Loris Karius
Lucky to get away with pushing first-half Kolarov effort on to his bar; otherwise relatively quiet 6
Trent Alexander-
Arnold
Another nerveless performance from the teenager, given space to push on 7
Dejan Lovren
Strong defensively, struck Roma’s bar just before half-time. Some impressive distribution 8
Virgil van Dijk
The pressure eased while Roma dropped into a rearguard action. Rarely challenged by Dzeko 7
Andy Robertson
Profited, like the right-back, from Roma’s narrowness in attack. Some good crosses, as expected 7
James Milner
Tireless as usual, his pressing helped win the ball to set up the opening goal. Unlucky to concede penalty 7
Jordan Henderson
Boundless energy in protecting back four but still able to exhort his team-mates to greater efforts 7
Alex Oxlade-
Chamberlain
Midfielder was burning up the pitch in attack and defence until injury struck 7
Mohamed Salah
Unplayable at times, he was withdrawn too early. Inspired passing and breaks even before his opener 9
Roberto Firmino
Missed early chance but otherwise
tormented Roma with timing and vision. Deserved his goal 8
Sadio Mané
Poor lofted finish in the first half. Later provided good support to score the third goal 7
Ratings by Paul Wilson
Roma
Alisson
Encouraged by early save from Salah, but given little chance by the same player twice before half-time 6
Federico Fazio
Former Tottenham player was solid in the air, adventurous on the ground when going forward 6
Kostas Manolas
Greece international was caught out of position when Firmino slipped Salah through for second goal 6
Juan Jesus
Booked when surprised by Mané’s pace, not a success at stopping Salah, a night to forget 5
Alessandro Florenzi The Italian was, like Kolarov, too easily pushed back by Liverpool’s wide players 5
Daniele De Rossi
Not given time to play his usual game, the midfielder struggled to handle Liverpool’s pace 6
Kevin Strootman
Early shot saved but the Netherlands international possibly at fault for second Liverpool goal 6
Aleksandar Kolarov
Could have opened the scoring but rarely made it as far forward again 6
Cengiz Ünder
The 20-year-old Turk was anonymous until being taken
off at half-time for Schick 5
Radja Nainggolan
Always willing to receive the ball, even under pressure. Some good touches and close control 7
Edin Dzeko
Not his most impressive game, often stationed too wide to cause trouble, but took goal well 7
Ratings by Paul Wilson
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Here’s the best quote I can find from Di Francesco: “We started well, but we lost too many duels in defence and then we lost our heads. We were in trouble, and we lost our unity. We kept a good attitude until the end.”
#premiumchampions#DiFrancesco: "Siamo partiti bene, ma se perdiamo troppi duelli in difesa poi perdiamo la testa. Siamo andati in difficoltà e ci siamo disuniti. Teniamo buono l'atteggiamento nel finale". #LiverpoolRoma #UCL pic.twitter.com/awl9I7m4B5
— PremiumSportHD (@PremiumSportHD) April 24, 2018
Here’s Jürgen Klopp – “The boys did fantastically well, and we go there and try to win again”:
For a long time it was a perfect performance, for 80 minutes or so. We made defensively one mistake, and Dzeko can use the situation. That can happen. We knew they had quality. We could avoid most of that over the game, but in that position not. Then I think we agree the penalty is not a penalty, not even a handball*, and now it’s 5-2. I would be much more happy of course if we’d won 5-0 or 5-1, but it’s still a fantastic result, I couldn’t even imagine that it’s possible. The boys did fantastically well, and we go there and try to win again.
You start the game, you always need to learn from the game. I thought how we played them, all these runs in behind, just brilliant. In the end, it changed the game completely. We scored these goals, we could have scored more. We missed a lot of chances. That’s all positive. In the moment it feels not that positive because they scored two goals. But it was brilliant, come on. We obviously have to go the hard way, no problem with that. At the end it’s hard.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, it’s probably a really bad injury, if we can say that already. That means a massive blow for us. We have still a few massive games to go, and the squad doesn’t get bigger. We need to be creative in the next few games. It’s absolutely better than I thought before the game.
Of all the mesmerising nights Liverpool have experienced under Anfield’s floodlights in European competition, where does this one stand? Up there, surely, with Saint-Étienne in 1977, the take-a-bow goal from Steven Gerrard against Olympiakos in 2005 and the fightback against Borussia Dortmund in 2016. Liverpool have put themselves in command and, barring an almost implausible feat of escapology, can start looking forward to the final in Ukraine on 26 May.
Here’s the rest of Daniel Taylor’s match report:
Here’s Jordan Henderson:
I think we’ll be disappointed with the two goals. It felt as though we were in full control and we basically gave them two goals. At the same time we’ve played well, we’ve won the game. We’ll go with a three-goal advantage but it’ll be difficult, as we saw in the last round. It’ll be a really tough challenge, but we’ve got to be confident. We’ve got to go there, put a solid display on and hopefully get to the final.
We still had chances to score in the final 20 minutes. I feel as though we gave them the Dzeko goal, which caused a few nerves. The penalty I thought was very, very harsh. But we’ve got to stay confident. It was a good performance for 70 minutes. We’ve got to go there and put in a good performance.
Some of the runs and some of the balls in behind were brilliant. We’re probably disappointed not to score more. Overall, we’ve got to stay positive. We know it won’t be easy over there. We need to be on our best, but I fancy us to go there and score as well, with the forward players we’ve got.
That was a classic first leg, fascinating and often brutal. Liverpool end disappointed with a three-goal lead – it’ll be interesting to hear Klopp’s post-match take.
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“It is hard to be a Liverpool fan,” writes Richard McGahey. “Can we get Mourinho to be our coach for the last 15 minutes of games?”
The final 15 minutes was poor from Liverpool. Salah, assuming there are no injury concerns, was taken off too early, they relaxed too soon and Roma punished them. Surely, though, they’ll score the goal they need in Rome?
Final score: Liverpool 5-2 Roma
90+4 mins: The end of a remarkable game.
90+2 mins: Liverpool’s final substitution sees Firmino slowly go off, and Klavan slowly come on.
90+1 mins: Into the first of four minutes of stoppage time. Fazio heads the corner wide.
90 mins: Nainggolan’s shot is deflected wide, and Roma have a corner.
90 mins: That penalty decision was harsh. The ball was blasted at Milner, he had no chance to get his arm out of the way, and there was no movement towards the ball.
Liverpool were flying without Ings....
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) April 24, 2018
88 mins: Fazio is booked for being angry and emotional. Henderson was also booked a couple of minutes ago, probably for similar reasons.
Roma have started their comeback earlier this time.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) April 24, 2018
Updated
87 mins: Dzeko now takes the ball down the left and fizzes the ball in, but Perotti turns it wide of the near post!
86 mins: Now Dzeko’s long-range strike dips just over the bar! What’s going on out there?
GOAL! Liverpool 5-2 Roma (Perotti, 85 mins)
Perotti sends Karius the wrong way, and sends the ball into the top corner, and this tie is not over!
Updated
Roma have a penalty!
85 min: A cross from the left is headed out to Nainggolan, whose first-time shot hits Milner. The referee says it hit his hand, and it was deliberate!
Updated
84 mins: Dzeko has another shot, but it’s weak and easily saved. Liverpool, though, are having a bad spell, and another Roma goal would be bad news.
82 mins: Wijnaldum should have scored a sixth! The ball is passes into him by Robertson, and he only needed to sidefoot goalwards – but he uses his right foot rather than his left, and misses it entirely.
82 mins: That is very nicely taken.
GOAL! Liverpool 5-1 Roma (Dzeko, 81 mins)
And there’s the away goal! Nainggolan lifts the ball into the area, Lovren totally misses his header and Dzeko chests down, and slams in.
Updated
78 mins: Roma know that their only chance in this tie is to score at least one away goal, and that they might as well lose 6-0 as 5-0, and are thus pushing forward.
77 mins: “I backed Liverpool 5-0 at 45-1. Can they stop now?” wonders Ian Bruce. Good call.
76 mins: Ings is played in down the right, and tries to cut back onto his left foot. He’s been watching too much Mo Salah. A defender gets a foot in the way.
75 mins: Strootman, victim of that Lovren tackle, is limping but has to play on, with Roma having used all their substitutions. “Luckily for Liverpool supporters like myself West Brom didn’t make it to the semi-finals of the Champions League,” notes Bryan Tisinger.
75 mins: Lovren is booked, and Salah is hooked. Ings is on.
WHAT A NIGHT.
— michael owen (@themichaelowen) April 24, 2018
This will live long in the memory.
74 mins: Wijnaldum has attempted the same clever 360-degree turn three times. It worked the first time, but not since.
73 mins: Save! Perotti’s fine cross from the left is met by Schick, who comfortably beats Robertson in the air, but Karius saves the header.
73 mins: Liverpool are going to bring on Danny Ings. Word is that Salah will be the one to go off.
71 mins: Lovren’s clearance hits Schick and rebounds, to his very great relief, just wide of goal. “It’s partly the time of year, and the colours of the respective team’s kits, but this is reminiscent of a truly sociopathic 5-0 dissection of Nottingham Forest by the home team, back when both clubs were at the summit,” writes Paul Griffin. “Some great, physically and mentally resilient footballers getting the Patrick Bateman treatment out there.”
70 mins: Roma send in a succession of crosses, without any of them quite falling their way inside the penalty area. Still, vaguely nervous moments for the home defence.
69 mins: That’s two goals and
three assists
two assists* for Salah. A remarkable player, and, on their day, a phenomenal team.
* Actually it was Milner who took this corner
Updated
GOAL! Liverpool 5-0 Roma (Firmino, 69 mins)
From the corner, Firmino’s headed bounces into the far corner!
Updated
68 mins: Gonalons’ first touch is a massively overhit pass that gifts Liverpool a corner.
66 mins: Roma make a double substitution: Gonalons comes on for De Rossi, and Perotti comes on for Jesus.
66 mins: Milner arrives late to challenge Strootman, who in trying to get out of the way plants his studs on Milner. Whose foul was it? Milner’s says the referee.
64 mins: Liverpool win a corner. It’s not a great delivery from Salah, but Alisson comes for it and, unchallenged, fumbles. Liverpool can’t take advantage of the mistake, though.
64 mins: The away goals rule means that even a team 4-0 up can’t get too overexcited. Five, though, at five you can probably start celebrating.
63 mins: The ball was played to Alexander-Arnold, just inside Roma’s half, and Kolarov left Salah to close him down. This allowed the full-back to volley it first-time to Salah, now completely unmarked.
Updated
GOAL! Liverpool 4-0 Roma (Firmino, 61 mins)
Another Salah assist! Again he’s given insulting amounts of space on the right wing, and he runs into the area, beats Jesus with a drop of the shoulder and fizzes the ball across goal to Firmino, who taps in!
Updated
61 mins: Playing a back three gives Roma a numerical advantage in midfield, but it doesn’t count for much when Liverpool keep hitting the ball right over all of them for one of their forwards to run onto.
60 mins: Another half-chance for Liverpool, but this time Roma get a body in the way.
59 mins: Roma have a shot! Kolarov passes to Schick, and though the ball’s behind him he improvises a first-time flick-lob. It floats wide.
58 mins: The space available for Salah and Mané, running down the flanks onto long balls behind the Roma wing-backs, is frankly ridiculous.
57 mins: Now Lovren’s long pass finds Mané, and hie pass inside to Salah is cut out just before the shot comes in.
Updated
GOAL! Liverpool 3-0 Roma (Mané, 56 mins)
This time Salah gets an assist, and it’s so simple! Alexander-Arnold plays a long ball down the right flank, Salah is perhaps just onside, and he pulls back to Mané, who has a tap-in.
Updated
54 mins: Manolas has the ball inside his own half, and Liverpool’s front three gang up on him, steal the ball away and have a great chance to attack. Firmino passes through to Mané, who is just offside.
53 mins: Fazio passes the ball right into Salah, and is extraordinarily lucky that it rebounds too far ahead of the Egyptian, allowing Alisson to reach it first.
51 mins: Nainggolan gets the ball inside the penalty area, and on the far side Florenzi runs in, completely unmarked. The cross is blocked, and the ball cleared, but a Roma player had the freedom of the penalty area there.
50 mins: Merseyside Police say they are investigating an assault outside the ground before the game.
We are investigating a serious assault of a man outside the Albert pub on Walton Breck Rd at about 7.35pm. Officers are appealing to anyone with information, or mobile phone footage to contact our social media desk via twitter @MerPolCC or Facebook Merseyside Police CC
— Merseyside Police (@MerseyPolice) April 24, 2018
49 mins: Schick gets his first touch. Sadly it’s a touch on Lovren, rather than the ball. Free kick.
48 mins: From the free kick, Alexander-Arnold shoots into the wall.
47 mins: The ball bounces off Milner’s knee and into Strootman’s outstretched arm, and Liverpool have a decently-positioned free-kick. “What an appeal,” says Glenn Hoddle, impressed by the crowd noise. “That’s the appeal of the season.”
46 mins: Peeeep! Liverpool get the second half under way and there is one personnel change to report: Roma have taken off Under, and brought on Schick.
BT Sport just showed a clip of Steven Gerrard celebrating Liverpool’s second goal. It’s interesting that he’s watching the game on the TV, when there’s a big window just behind him and a great view of the pitch beyond.
Liverpool had 10 shots on target in the first half. Roma had one – Kolarov’s 30-yard, Karius-humbling blast. It’s a – somewhat unfair – tale of total dominance.
Both goals were taken not just well, but perfectly. Salah’s final touches were unimprovable. “I hope Mané got a drip feed of Salah’s cool during half time,” writes Harry Palmer.
I’m assuming that Roma will be strongly reminded of their responsibilities at the break, and that Liverpool won’t enjoy as much freedom at the start of the second half as they enjoyed for the last 20 minutes or so of the first. As such, it’s just as well they grabbed a second goal just before Eusebio Di Francesco got his hands on his team at half-time.
The defending for Liverpool’s second goal was hopeless. The build-up and the finish were excellent, but Roma didn’t exactly make it hard for them.
Half time: Liverpool 2-0 Roma
45+3 mins: The fans are on their feet, as Liverpool take a two-goal lead into the break.
45+1 mins: There will be at least two minutes of stoppage time, though given that the first of them has been entirely taken up by celebrations, there may be a third.
Updated
GOAL! Liverpool 2-0 Roma (Salah, 45 mins)
He’s done it again! This time Salah is played in by Firmino and dinks it gently over Alisson, the ball dribbling over the line and in!
Updated
43 mins: Another Liverpool corner, another free header for Lovren. This time he’s well beyond the far post, and Alisson catches his effort.
42 mins: The last 20 minutes have been extraordinary. Roma, having started the game so well, have been desperate. Their high line has flopped backwards, and now Liverpool can play in front of them at their leisure.
41 mins: Now a long ball finds Wijnaldum in the penalty area, and his low, hard shot is pushed away by Alisson.
40 mins: Wijnaldum’s pass puts Mané one on one against Florenzi, with just Alisson behind them. Florenzi wins.
39 mins: Alexander-Arnold catches Strootman with an ill-judged tackle, and is booked.
38 mins: Lovren hits the bar! He is absolutely, totally unmarked, perhaps eight yards from goal, when the ball drops onto his head, and he has got to score that. Liverpool have scored one, but missed two absolute sitters.
38 mins: Liverpool are back on the attack. They’ve got a corner now.
38 mins: There was an outbreak of applause in Guardian HQ when that flew in.
36 mins: Liverpool really needed to turn that extended period of dominance into a goal, and what a way to do it! The ball is won smartly in midfield and played to Salah, on the right-hand corner of the penalty area, and he shifts it onto his left foot and curls beautifully into the top, far corner of goal!
Updated
GOAL! Liverpool 1-0 Roma (Salah, 36 mins)
He’s scored another beauty!
Updated
35 mins: Liverpool continue to run at a chance a minute. Firmino’s 20-yarder is saved by Alisson, then Milner’s drive is blocked.
34 mins: Now Mané does put the ball in the net – but it’s offside! Milner passes to Robertson, whose low, hard centre is turned in, but Mané was clearly offside.
32 mins: The corner is a bit overhit, but Van Dijk conjures an overhead kick to sent it back into the mixer. Nothing comes of it, but nice work.
31 mins: The last five minutes have been fabulous for Liverpool. Now Milner is played in, and wins a corner.
30 mins: Now Salah’s pass towards Firmino bounces off a defender back to him, and his first-time, left-footed shot is palmed away by Alisson!
29 mins: Another chance falls to Mane! And this one flies even higher! The ball is played over Roma’s defence to Firmino on the right, and he twists and pulls back to Mane, who approaches the ball at a bad angle, and then thumps it 15 yards over the bar!
Updated
28 mins: What a chance for Liverpool, and Mane can’t take it! He beats Fazio with a lovely first touch, just inside Roma’s half, and he’s away. Off he goes, into the penalty area, with Alisson rooted to the spot. And once he gets there, he thumps his shot high!
Updated
26 mins: The night’s first yellow card is shown to Jesus, whose tackle on Mane is late and ankle-high.
25 mins: A fine cross from Alexander-Arnold lands just out of Mane’s reach.
22 mins: Roma have certainly been the better side in the first quarter of the game. Liverpool might have been distracted by Oxlade-Chamberlain’s injury, but they need to refocus, fast.
21 mins: The ball is played into the Liverpool penalty area. Under gets there first, and Lovren arrives late, with an ill-judged swipe. Under stays on his feet, which is just as well – that was a penalty waiting to happen.
20 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain has been loaded onto a stretcher and is being carried away for further treatment.
19 mins: Karius got a hand to it, in fact, so that’ll go down as a save – but a really dodgy one. Had that been two inches lower, it would have gone down as the most howling of howlers.
18 mins: Roma hit the bar! The corner is headed clear by Van Dijk and runs to Kolarov, whose 25-yard drive goes straight through Karius’s hands and crashes against the woodwork!
18 mins: The ball is fizzed in to Dzeko, whose first-time flick round the corner to Under is really very lovely, but it’s headed behind by a defender.
16 mins: The physio eventually lifts him to his feet, but turns and gives a “substitute-this-man” gesture to the bench.
Updated
15 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain slides in to tackle Kolarov, but as he goes down his right leg gets caught under his body and he seems in considerable discomfort.
14 mins: Roma work the ball well from right to left, but Kolarov’s cross is caught by Karius.
13 mins: Nobody on either side is getting enough time on the ball to do anything very good with it, so far. In addition, a full day of rain means the ball is zipping off the turf at lightning pace, and people are occasionally falling over.
10 mins: Salah is taken out by Jesus – who fell over into him, but still, an accidental trip is still a trip – inside the centre circle. The referee waves play on.
9 mins: Roma are seeing a lot of the ball. Alexander-Arnold slides in to intercept Fazio’s pass, though, and Liverpool’s break ends when Mane fails to control the ball in the penalty area.
8 mins: Firmino passes inside to Oxlade-Chamberlain, whose low drive from 30 yards goes straight down the middle of goal. “He strikes it too well,” muses Glenn Hoddle.
7 mins: The linesman’s spare flag is more broken than the first flag. A flag physio is on the scene.
Updated
6 mins: Firmino is played through on the right of the penalty area – he looks offside but the linesman is unable to flag due to broken flag – but shoots across goal from an acute angle.
5 mins: One of the linesmen has already had to switch his flags, after the original one fell apart.
5 mins: The danger for Liverpool is that Roma’s high defensive line will tempt their players into playing optimistic long passes over the top from too deep, which will either not be long enough and be headed away, or too long and bounce through to Alisson.
3 mins: At the other end, Salah gets down the right, cuts inside and curls the ball into the arms of Alisson.
2 mins: A shot! Roma have it, with Dzeko receiving a ball from the left and laying it back to Strootman, whose 20-yarder was too close to Karius.
2 mins: Roma are playing a high defensive line, which everyone agreed pre-match was a bad plan. Time will tell.
1 min: Peeeeeep! Roma, to a cacophony of whistles, get the game started.
Preambles complete. Let’s watch football!
Updated
It’s raining in Liverpool, and apparently has been for most of the day. In as much as you can tell on the TV, the atmosphere sounds amazing.
Updated
And out they come!
A couple of minutes before the teams come out. At Anfield, they’re playing You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Jürgen Klopp has spoken to BT Sport about what he’s looking for tonight:
First of all a good game, and then a result which we could work with. But we cannot get a result without a good game. That’s it. It’s a strong [Roma] side. Playing the same system like they played against Barcelona. So, big honour. It’s all good, and really exciting. It’s an open game. If you go through their line-up, it’s a mix-up of youth, experience, skills. If you go through our line-up it’s the same thing.
You never go into the game and think about conceding goals. We always play our football. We don’t want to concede but we want to score, never at the cost of a leaking defence. It’s April, we worked together since July. We know how we have to play the game. But in the end there’s a ball, 11 players on the other side, and you have to have answers for all the things. You need to learn from the game. It would be nice not to concede. We don’t think about a result at the moment, we think about the performance we have to do.
I’ve no doubt this has involved a tiny minority of those fans at the game, but nevertheless, this is depressing:
Trouble outside Anfield just before kick off - Roma ‘fans’ charge using belts & batons - provoking Liverpool retaliation @itvfootball pic.twitter.com/zrGic1CWjp
— gabriel clarke (@gabrielclarke05) April 24, 2018
Quick pre-match quiz, anyone?
According to the Sunday Times’ Jonathan Northcroft, there has been some violence outside the stadium. “Roma fans have just attacked Liverpool supporters with belts, outside the Albert. About 20. One guy down getting treatment,” he wrote on Twitter. “The Roma group came out of Venmore St, and attack was sudden. Picked an older Liverpool fan and attacked him. A lot of police around but they were slow on the scene. Poor guy is still down. Horrible stuff. Roma group were chased down the street before police arrived.”
Here are some old friends, catching up. Salah, I note, is toting not just a washbag but an entire suitcase.
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Pre-match reading (5) I think this is the last of it, though you never know.
Here’s Jurgen Klopp on his team selection, via liverpoolfc.com:
We cannot get a result without a good game. It’s a strong [Roma] side. They are playing the same system they played against Barcelona – so [that’s a] big honour! It will be exciting. It’s a really open game with two strong sides. Go through their line-up and it’s a mixture of experience, youth, skills, threat and everything. Go through our line-up and it’s pretty much the same. That’s how a semi-final should be.
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“It’s a shame that Emre Can isn’t available to play today,” writes Peter Oh. “Given that Roma’s starting lineup features Cengiz Under, a Cengiz-Can battle would have brought even more symbolism to an already epic clash.”
And another …
Updated
There are some great photographs being taken outside Anfield tonight:
Updated
Roma, meanwhile, appear to have gone with 3-4-2-1, quite against Jonathan Wilson’s prediction in his pre-match statistical preview. Surely some mistake.
“A clean sheet must be the mission today,” writes Brandon Dwonch. “Roma got passed Shakhtar and Barca on away goals. The key is the full-backs. To provide enough width and offensive prescence to free up Salah and Mané, but be able to limit the service to Dzeko.” I think if you offered Liverpool a goalless draw now, they wouldn’t take it. They want to win by two or more goals, and then pick Roma off on the break at the Stadio Olimpico.
Pre-match reading (4)
So Roberto Firmino, Andrew Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dejan Lovren and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, all rested for the draw against West Bromwich Albion, are back.
Seize the day, says Jürgen Klopp:
The message in Jürgen Klopp's programme notes... #LFC pic.twitter.com/NdG63xGFTM
— Neil Jones (@neiljonesgoal) April 24, 2018
The teams!
Today’s starting line-ups have been announced:
Liverpool: Karius, Alexander-Arnold, Lovren, Van Dijk, Robertson, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Henderson, Milner, Salah, Firmino, Mané. Subs: Mignolet, Clyne, Wijnaldum, Klavan, Moreno, Ings, Solanke.
Roma: Alisson, Fazio, Manolas, Juan Jesus, Florenzi, De Rossi, Strootman, Kolarov, Under, Nainggolan, Dzeko. Subs: Skorupski, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Perotti, Schick, Gonalons, Bruno Peres, El Shaarawy.
Referee: Felix Brych.
Tonight's #LFC side. #UCL pic.twitter.com/eDkVigc1LB
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) April 24, 2018
TEAM NEWS | 📋 | Here it is, our starting line-up for tonight’s @ChampionsLeague semi-final clash against @LFC! DAJE! 🐺
— AS Roma English (@ASRomaEN) April 24, 2018
#ASRoma #UCL #LFCRoma pic.twitter.com/6lX5AWzL6X
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Pre-match reading (3) There’s lots more where this came from.
Here’s a live picture from outside Anfield. Scenes.
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Pre-match reading (2)
Pre-match reading (1) There’s lots of stuff for you to read while you wait for the action to begin. Here’s a starter:
Hello world!
So I went on holiday for a couple of weeks over Easter, somewhere distant and remote, where mobile phones don’t work and internet access is poor, and completely missed the Champions League quarter-finals. What I heard, though, sounded excellent. And it is perhaps those snippets, stories of ludicrous overhead kicks and remarkable comebacks, that have contributed to the feeling I have now, a feeling that can only be described as intense, childish anticipation.
Perhaps the particular edge-of-the-seat, full-throttle nature of this Liverpool team has contributed, or the fact that Roma’s side is crowded with players who for various reasons I rather like, or indeed the fact that Roma happen to be Italian side I have most often seen live, or that I am just about old enough to remember Liverpool’s first and most famous match against these opponents. I don’t support Liverpool or Roma, the last football match I watched was extremely poor and less than 24 hours ago, I am spending another evening in the office – but I am excited. Please, football gods, don’t let me down tonight.
Statistical pointer dept: Roma have only won one of their last 14 away games in the Champions League, but their away record in Serie A is pretty good – the third best in the league, in fact (they’re No6 at home, and third overall). They have also only won one of their 19 European fixtures in England (it was at Liverpool in 2001, though it was only 1-0 and they had already lost 2-0 at home).
Right then. This is going to be good. Isn’t it?
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