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While the good news for Liverpool is that they get to play Paris Saint-Germain again next week, the bad news is that they get to play Paris Saint-Germain again next week. Having spent much of his time in England bemoaning the cowardice of opposition teams who sit deep against his side, there was a certain irony in seeing Liverpool’s head coach embrace the negative tactics he has so often pooh-poohed during his side’s 2-0 evisceration at the hands of the reigning Bigger Cup holders in Paris. On a night when Liverpool had just 28% possession, registered zero shots on target and hoped for the best at a couple of Joe Gomez long throws, Arne Slot was at least treated to a masterclass on how best to overcome the kind of “anti-football” he has long lamented.
After two consecutive thrashings that suggested any residual heavy-metal football from the Jürgen Klopp era has now made way for its elevator-music equivalent, Slot offered up no excuses and admitted he had flown in the face of his own purist philosophy in an attempt to keep the tie alive for the second leg. While a faint pulse remains, its presence is down to a combination of the heroics of the game’s second-best Georgian, some generous refereeing and some really quite atrocious PSG finishing rather than anything achieved by Liverpool’s snake-belly low block. “They ripped us apart at times,” wailed Slot in a series of sombre post-match debriefs. “Every tactic has been tried over here, but the result is always the same, with Paris Saint-Germain blowing the opponent away. They have so many weapons and it makes them so difficult to play against. We were in survival mode, but they kept us alive by missing their chances.”
