Maybe they’re still running now, this Liverpool team. Maybe, as the sun rises over Anfield on Thursday morning, there will still be men in red shirts, chasing, harrying, closing down, sprinting away, as if their lives depended on it.
Jurgen Klopp called for bravery, he called for a team that would dare to make history, and he got it. He got a response that swept the best team in Britain off the pitch, that sent Pep Guardiola and Manchester City back along the M62 vanquished, humbled.
Some will say the tie is not over but if Liverpool play like this again, it is. The level of defensive commitment, the tirelessness, the ferocity – well, City could not with it. We expected goals, and got them, but we expected them shared, and all went to one team.
Sadio Mane puts Liverpool 3-0 up just after the half-hour mark with a header from Mohamed Salah’s pinpoint cross
Mane is mobbed by team-mates as Dejan Lovren roars towards a euphoric Kop crowd following the first-half onslaught
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain powers home from roughly 25 yards out to double the lead for Liverpool in the 20th minute
The England international celebrates after scoring in his first Champions League quarter-final appearance
Mohamed Salah fired Liverpool ahead from close range in the 12th minute after a mistake from Manchester City’s Kyle Walker
Salah wheels away in delight after notching his 38th goal of an astonishing debut season at the Merseyside club
Salah slides to his knees as Roberto Firmino and Andy Robertson join him in celebrating his opening strike in the tie
Liverpool were magnificent. Clinical upfront, but mighty in their resilience, too. Loris Karius did not have a shot to save against a group of players that have scored relentlessly this season. Liverpool’s midfield were the stars. They protected the defensive line, hassled City’s creators to the point of madness. Guardiola’s side looked lost in a way they have not all season – even here in January, losing 4-3.
This was, as the scoreline suggests, better than that. A complete, emphatic triumph of will and spirit, backed by ferocious noise that only Anfield on European nights conjures.
This was a marker thrown down for next season, too. Liverpool are the real deal. Liverpool have the beating of the best team in the land. And if they can do this to City, they could do it to a lot of other teams, too. Maybe even Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, this season.
It was not just the Manchester City bus that was harmed, after 31 minutes and three goals down their coach was looking pretty damaged, too.
For Pep Guardiola to say the way his team played suited Liverpool perfectly was an astonishing admission on the eve of such a big game. For him then to stick to that plan was just perverse. Maybe playing four at the back and omitting Raheem Sterling from his starting line-up was Guardiola making concessions. If so, it didn’t work.
Leroy Sane embarks on a marauding run down the left-hand side of the Liverpool box as Dejan Lovren watches on
Mohamed Salah and Aymeric Laporte challenge for the ball during the opening stages of Wednesday night’s game
Sadio Mane leaves Manchester City centre-back Nicolas Otamendi for dead as he charges into the penalty area
Liverpool centre-back Dejan Lovren muscles past Manchester City striker Gabriel Jesus as he chases after the loose ball
Liverpool forward Sadio Mane chases after the ball as Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne attempts to track his run
Liverpool duo James Milner and Andy Robertson crowd out Manchester City star Kevin De Bruyne to try and win the ball
Jurgen Klopp watches on as Liverpool star Mohamed Salah receives treatment early in the second-half on Wednesday
Nobody wants a pragmatic Manchester City or Guardiola. Nobody wants cat and mouse. Yet was there a way City could have set up that did not leave them so vulnerable to Liverpool’s front three? It’s not as if plan A had worked here as it had elsewhere, Liverpool away being City’s sole defeat of the Premier League season.
What cannot be denied is that Jurgen Klopp got all he demanded from his team, maybe even more. Had a Virgil Van Dijk header found the target in the second minute of first-half injury team, Liverpool could have gone in four clear. In even their wildest fantasies, no-one would have dreamed that.
They were pinching at three, not least because it was well deserved. The first was against the run of play; the second a shot from way out. Yet by the time Liverpool made it three, nobody could argue there wasn’t sufficient merit in this performance, even if possession still favoured City.
The ferociousness of Klopp’s men, the sheer volume of work and energy expended was quite stunning. James Milner was quite brilliant, so too Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and the tidy Jordan Henderson, who controlled a midfield that had been rampant across Stanley Park on Saturday night.
The defence were committed and as brave as Klopp demanded and the forwards terrifying. There is not a team in Europe that would not approach a fixture at Anfield with a degree of trepidation having seen this this.
Not just the reception en route because any player of significance will have seen inhospitable crowds before – and not the noise because there is plenty of that around Europe on Champions League nights, too. Liverpool’s strength is that the passion in the ground finds its echo on the pitch.
An old cliche, sure, but Klopp’s players do seem to want it more. They fired into tackles, their recovery sprints were lung-bursting, their forward runs courageous and committed. Seeing Leroy Sane, brilliant though he is, watch Oxlade-Chamberlain for Liverpool’s second encapsulated the difference.
Klopp embraces the Liverpool talisman as he makes his way down the tunnel after picking up an injury just after half-time
Liverpool midfielder James Milner gets his foot to the ball and boots it upfield after a goalmouth scramble in front of the Kop
Liverpool defender Trent Alexander-Arnold tracks the forward run of Manchester City striker Gabriel Jesus
Liverpool substitute Georginio Wijnaldum puts a hand across Manchester City forward Leroy Sane in the second-half
Loris Karius gets down to the loose ball as Gabriel Jesus tangles with Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk in the second-half
Pep Guardiola looks crestfallen on the touchline as Liverpool the first-half of the first-leg Champions League quarter-final
Jurgen Klopp shakes hands with his opposite number in the technical area before kick-off at a packed Anfield
Manchester City thought the usual, the plan A that had served them so magnificently throughout this season would be enough. Liverpool thought this was different. It demanded more of them.
They gave more – the way an Olympic runner might in the last lap with gold in sight, the way rowers do over that final 500 metres. This first-half was an apex for Liverpool under Klopp – and there have been some contenders.
That Liverpool’s first goal was scored at a time when Manchester City had recorded 76 per cent possession sums up the difference between having the ball, and sticking it in the net.
Sane had tested Liverpool with a brilliant dribble through three men into the penalty area, his shot deflected for a corner, but most of City’s good work had been done controlling the rhythm and tempo of the game. It was being played at their pace, to their specification. And then a momentary lapse later, and it was not.
Mohamed Salah was left unguarded on the halfway line, which is a bit like leaving Winnie the Pooh to his own devices around honey. What followed was entirely predictable. Salah got the ball – he was a sliver offside, but by a margin that was not outrageous – and broke for goal at electrifying speed.
He fed Roberto Firmino whose shot was weak but wasn’t well dealt with by Ederson. Kyle Walker should have cleared it, maybe twice, but it fell to Salah in a position very similar to his goal in Porto. As on that night, he made no mistake.
Anfield provided an electric atmosphere as Liverpool took on Manchester City in the quarter-finals of the Champions League
Immediately, City could have broken back. David Silva found Sane who broke with a long run but missed the target, and from there City fell apart.
They were two goals down after 20 minutes, three behind after 31. Liverpool had one of those spells where stuff just worked. They gambled, and won. They were brave. They were what Klopp asked them to be.
Oxlade-Chamberlain was superb and his goal was just reward for the sort of display that Arsene Wenger rarely extracted from him at Arsenal. A tussle in midfield went Liverpool’s way, naturally, and Milner fed Oxlade-Chamberlain who took a chance with a shot from 25 yards – a chance that paid off as Ederson grasped at air.
Scenes. Flares. Maybe a UEFA fine. That wasn’t going to dampen anyone’s night, and when Sadio Mane added a third the only reason the roof wasn’t actually raised was because some Liverpool fans were struck dumb with disbelief.
Salah had a shot; Vincent Kompany blocked it. Salah tried again, this time with subtlety – a lovely dinked cross that was met by Mane between two blue shirts heading downwards into goal. It’s too easy to blame pre-match intimidation. What scared City was on the field, not on the streets.