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Mohamed Salah stood with his hands on his shoulders, staring into the distance. His revenge mission against Real Madrid had just failed.
Andy Robertson sat on the field of Stade de France with his head down. Even after a monumental appearance the desperate Virgil Van Dijk stood ready to burst into tears. It was a painful image. The Reds respected opponents and saw Real Madrid raise the Champions League number 14.
Immediately after the end of the Madrid players’ holiday, the footballers and the Liverpool staff immediately entered the locker rooms.
Jurgen Klopp broke the silence in the locker room with a defiant speech, but did not serve to lift the humor that was on the ground.
“I told the boys I was proud, but I saw that I was the only one at that moment,” Klopp said. “Boys need a little more. I understand.”
A season that seemed like it could give Liverpool everything, but that ended in the most disappointing form. The ambition to ‘touch the seventh heaven’, ie to win the seventh Champions League in the history of the club, remained in the attempt, but even the triple of cups failed, which would equal the greatest achievement in the history of the team.
After losing the Premier League title by the narrowest margin on the Sunday we left behind, Liverpool lost a Champions League final they really should have won. Two heavy blows within a week. The two most prestigious trophies slipped from his hands when they looked closer than ever.
What a miserable night for Liverpool fans, who had previously turned Paris into a “red sea” with an extraordinary presence in the French capital. They had to face chaos and danger outside the stadium, due to the failure of the UEFA organization and the French police.
Triumph in the FA Cup and Carabao Cup should not be underestimated at all, but for The Reds it seems like the minimum reward for an edition held at the highest levels.
The Reds should not forget how special the journey was just because the final destination did not turn out to be what they had hoped for. Throughout the football season Liverpool has produced unforgettable moments. However, the bitter reality is that the history books will show that Liverpool failed at the most important stage.
They clashed with a maximally engaged Thibaut Courtois, who made phenomenal receptions to deny the attempts of Mo Salah and Sadio Mane.
They pay the price of failure to concretize dangerous cases. Liverpool lacked sharpness and composure in the final third of the pitch and their standard kicks, the source of 26 goals this season, disappointed them.
There will be a lot of regret. So many flagrant cases were not exploited. Maybe match number 63 of this exhausting edition was superfluous. Carlo Ancelotti’s team certainly had enough time available to prepare for the final in the most comfortable way possible, as they had secured the La Liga title a month earlier.
Liverpool has had a high physical load in recent weeks. No day off for them. The calendar has been tight and Salah, Van Dijk, Fabinho and Thiago suffered with physical problems.
“Is it possible to play your best football in game number 63 of the season? I do not know, but I saw a lot of good things. My team was full of desire, full of passion; “We tried hard, but we did not get the reward,” said Klopp.
Considering that Klopp’s supporters scored a record 147 goals for the club in all competitions this season, it is a crazy statistic that they failed to score once in three major finals lasting 330 minutes, having need a penalty to win both the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup.
In those three games they recorded 61 shots, including 17 in the quad, and a figure of 5.7 for the expected goals. Mo Salah did not maintain the same sporting performance in the second half of the season. Prior to his departure in January to play in the African Cup of Nations, the Egyptian had scored 23 times in his first 26 appearances of the season for Liverpool.
He has scored just eight times in 25 games since his return from the tournament in February, and three of them were penalties, but productivity in the first half of the season was high enough to share the Premier League Golden Boot with Heung Min-Son with 23 goals scored.
Salah recorded six shots on goal against Real Madrid more than any other player in a Champions League final, but could not pass Thibaut Courtois.
Mane proved to be extremely valuable to Jurgen Klopp in the remainder of the footballing edition – with 13 of his 23 goals for Liverpool this season coming after the 30-year-old led Senegal to a historic African Cup of Nations triumph – but , after an impressive start to the first half in Paris, his influence faded in The Reds game.
Diogo Jota, Liverpool’s third top scorer, closed out his second season at the club with 21 goals, but only four of them came after February. The drop in performance justifies itself somewhat for the sole reason that Jota’s time was limited after the approach of January, Luis Diaz, who took his place as headliner.
It would be a mistake to blame only Trent Alexander-Arnold at the moment of the only goal in the Champions League final, as Vinicius Junior was unmarked by the Englishman in the second pillar to finalize with the empty net. Beyond everything, the right-back has been outstanding this season, with 18 assists.
The biggest problems for Liverpool were related to the poor start of the second half and the panic that accompanied them in trying to equalize the figures as Real Madrid tried to give the final blow through discounts on the counterattack.
A positive sign on the evening of May 28 for Jurgen Klopp was the solid performance of Ibrahima Konate in his hometown. The young center-back, who turned just 23 years old last week, undoubtedly rewarded Klopp’s confidence in choosing him ahead of veteran Joel Matip. Konate has a bright future according to the promising sparks of this debut season at Liverpool.
“This club is in a good moment, we will go again,” Klopp insisted. “These guys are really competitive. They have an extraordinary attitude and it is a fantastic group. “Where is next year’s final?” Istanbul. Book your hotel. ”
Klopp managed to get the perfect answer to the Liverpool agony of losing the European finals in Basel to Sevilla in the 2015-16 season and in Kiev two years later, and will surely ensure that they channel the feeling of despair into a similar way.
But the shadows of failure in the most critical stages of the Premier League and Champions League will surely haunt them for a long time. The Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup finals and the accumulation of 92 points in the English Championship and only four losses in 63 games played in an intense season for The Reds.
However, beyond the extraordinary achievements, great successes and impressive performances, the 2021-2022 season for Liverpool will finally be considered as a story that closes with the remorseful call “ah, what could have been” ./ SuperSport
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