Hope sprang eternal because this is Anfield, the partisan, stubbornly inhospitable place where European comebacks have become part-art form, part-folk memory.
Long before kick-off, they were, of course, dialling down the list of clubs who had arrived with an advantage and left with nothing: Barcelona 2019, Olympiacos 2004, right back to Saint-Etienne 1977, when a skinny-legged David Fairclough danced through the French midfield.
This challenge felt every bit as great, because, though Galatasaray brought a slender advantage, something at the heart of Liverpool has been malfunctioning. A club whose glories have always been based on the collective is suddenly a group of moving parts. ‘Not a team but a team of individuals,’ as Jamie Carragher put it in a searing and significant analysis on Sky’s Monday Night Football this week, after the late capitulation to Tottenham Hotspur which in so many ways felt like a defeat.
The white heat of this cauldron very much measured up to those mighty nights of yore and a ban on Galatasaray fans imposed after their trip to Juventus helped, though the Turks’ 220 so-called permitted ‘VIPs’ did a lot of whistling for people in the posh seats. UEFA away fan ‘bans’ have been routinely flaunted down the years.
A contributory part to the rather preposterous spectacle that the Turks presented, rolling around to feign injury, egged on by a manager wearing a black suit, patent black shoes and an outsized club scarf.
Madness, so much of it, for half an hour or so, with Liverpool contributing through the same zany efforts to score we’d witnessed here on Sunday. From the start, there was a pace and purpose from them unseen for weeks. But Hugo Ekitike and Fabian Wirtz seemed to be engaged in a contest to see who could miss by the widest margin and Mo Salah, still a shadow of the once imperious Egyptian king, was not far behind. The Salah of last season would have scored five.
‘Shoot, shoot,’ Anfield implored their team, again and again, desperate to have this over quickly; their anxiety borne of a knowledge that however poor an opposition – and Galatasaray were desperate – things can currently never be safe.
Could someone step up? Become the sentinel that Steven Gerrard, whose name was sung as he appeared with the broadcasting team here on Wednesday night, had been for all those years when European glory became synonymous with this place? It was another No 8, as things turned out. With hair raked back and socks pulled down, Dominik Szoboszlai – leader, agitator-in-chief and de facto captain – dragged Liverpool up and on.
The Hungarian’s criticism of those fans who had emptied out of Anfield early on Sunday was misjudged, given the meagreness of the performance and the care needed with such pronouncements in the times we are in. But suddenly that seemed immaterial.
It was he who strode into the fringes of the penalty area just beyond the half-hour mark, to strike home the ball which Alexis Mac Allister had rolled there, working a clever corner set-piece. He who implored this place to maintain the monumental noise. He who brought out two big saves and earned the penalty which should have put this game out of sight, having raced to chase down a ball and been caught by defender Ismail Jakobs.
Had Szoboszlai stepped up to take the ensuing kick, you sensed Anfield would have been able to breathe and expel all its nervous energy. Instead, we had Salah’s effort, weakly struck down the centre of Ugurcan Cakir’s goal: a metaphor for a lot of his night.
It was a measure of the anxiety Slot’s players were labouring under that when a lead was finally established, the dam broke, with two goals in as many minutes which sent this old place into ecstasy.
Szoboszlai was at the hub again, running a ball up into the path of Salah who cut it inside for Ekitike to strike the ball home. Ryan Gravenberch originated and finished the third, driving home the rebound after a Salah shot was saved. Salah took on a ball Wirtz rolled under his studs to unfurl a fourth.
Some of the Salah Kop anthems struck up then, though this wise and knowing football public know a real saviour when they see one.
LIVERPOOL VS GALATASARAY PLAYER AND MANAGER RATINGS
Liverpool (4-3-3): Alisson 6; Frimpong 7.5 (Jones 67 6), Konate 6.5, Van Dijk 6, Kerkez 6.5; Gravenberch 6.5, Szoboszlai 8.5, Alexis Mac Allister 6; Salah 5.5 (Gakpo 74 6), Ekitike 6, Wirtz 6.5
Manager: A Slot 7
Galatasaray (4-2-3) Cakir 7.5; Boey 6, Singo 5.5, Bardakci 5 (Elmani 6), Jakobs 5.5; Torreira 6 (Akgun 5.5), Lemina 6; Sailai 6.5, Sara 5.5, Yilmaz 6; Osimhen 5.5 (Sane 46).
Manager: O Buruk 6
Referee: S Marciniak (Poland) 7
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‘He was fabulous here from start to finish, Gerrard said of Szoboszlai on Wednesday night. ‘He’s been the go-to man. The most consistent player.’
The prospect of a quarter final against PSG, who eliminated Liverpool last year, is daunting – a challenge which will place them in a different universe to this – but they will be fortified by Szoboszlai, their warrior soul, who has the incentive of a final in his native Hungary, two months from now.
Champions LeagueLiverpool