Eintracht Frankfurt 1-5 Liverpool: Champions League – live reaction | Champions League ستاديوم بوست
Key events
FULL TIME: Eintracht Frankfurt 1-5 Liverpool
Liverpool snap their losing streak. But another streak continues: this is the third consecutive Champions League game involving Eintracht that’s ended 5-1!
90 min +1: Salah cuts in from the right and balloons over the bar. He’s desperate for a goal but not particularly doing himself any favours. Wirtz is certainly within his rights to have a word.
90 min: Salah is released into the box down the right. He’s got Wirtz in the middle, waiting to tap his first Liverpool goal home, but opts to shoot from a tight angle instead. Saved. Dreadful decision.
89 min: Szoboszlai, Chiesa and Wirtz combine crisply down the middle. Szoboszlai nearly tees up Salah to his right, but the ball clanks between his feet.
87 min: Mamardashvili batters long. Amenda misjudges the flight of the ball, allowing Chiesa to tear off with it down the left. Chiesa looks for Salah in the middle, but can’t quite get the cross right.
86 min: A sense now that both teams would be more than happy to call it a day, for wildly different reasons.
84 min: Theate pings a pass down the left touchline for Chaibi, who sails away from the flailing Szoboszlai and comes infield, whip-curling a shot across Mamardashvili and inches wide of the bottom right. The keeper probably had that covered, but it was mighty close, and you wouldn’t bet the farm on that being so.
83 min: Now it’s Eintracht’s turn for a little keep-ball, but Liverpool don’t mind too much. The home fans entertain themselves with a rendition of Hey Jude.
81 min: Liverpool run the clock down with some keep-ball.
79 min: Liverpool stroke it around in the relaxed, job-done fashion. “Hands across the interweb to Mark Errett,” writes Phil Sawyer, “red/green colour deficiency the bane of my life supporting the Mighty perhaps Reds.”
77 min: Salah has already put himself in a couple of promising positions, nearly teeing up Mac Allister with a cross from the right, then prodding a weak shot goalwards from the inside-left channel, the flag then going up for offside.
76 min: Skhiri comes on for Knauff. “What’s the German for ‘Doctor Eintracht’?” wonders Tim Woods.
75 min: With Liverpool home and hosed, they can wrap some people up in cotton wool – off come Konate, Gakpo and Ekitike – and hope to play some others back into form. On come Salah, Mac Allister and Gomez.
73 min: Chiesa wedges a lovely ball down the left and nearly releases Gakpo into the area. Only some very steely, determined defending from Koch stops Gakpo getting a shot away.
72 min: Eintracht’s best hope now is for Liverpool to declare. “I never thought I’d see a kit clash worse than Wales vs Ireland in the Six Nations,” writes Ryan Price. “But this is horrendous, utterly confusing and unwatchable!”
GOAL! Eintracht Frankfurt 1-5 Liverpool (Szoboszlai 70)
Liverpool ping the ball this way and that. Patient probing. Wirtz tees up Szoboszlai, 25 yards out. He takes a touch to the right, before fizzing a low shot across Zetterer and into the bottom right. What a finish!
68 min: Liverpool are rampant. Chiesa releases Szoboszlai into the box down the right. Szoboszlai could shoot, but looks for Ekitike in the middle instead. Koch breaks up the move, just in time. This could get messy for the hosts.
67 min: Just before the goal, Eintracht had made another double change, replacing Doan and Götze with Burkardt and Uzun.
GOAL! Eintracht Frankfurt 1-4 Liverpool (Gakpo 66)
Szoboszlai rolls a pass down the right for Wirtz, who delivers a sitter into the centre for Gakpo, who opens his body and slams into the bottom left. Simple as that. Two perfectly weighted passes and bang.
65 min: Bradley has a whack from the right-hand edge of the D. The keeper turns the ball onto the right-hand post and away. Liverpool searching for a fourth.
63 min: Gakpo plays Ekitike in down the left with a forensic pass. Ekitike has options in the middle, but tries to beat Zetterer from a tight angle. The keeper wins the battle. Not a good decision.
61 min: Szoboszlai rolls a fine pass down the inside-right channel to release Wirtz, who runs past the ball, ruining the chance. But Liverpool recycle possession, and Wirtz comes again down the right, cutting back from the byline for Szoboszlai, who swipes a weak shot across the face of goal and wide left.
59 min: Frankfurt make their first changes of the night. Kristensen and Bahoya are replaced by Burkardt and Collins.
58 min: Götze channels his early 2010s self by rolling a pass down the right to release Doan, who wins a corner off Szoboszlai. The set piece is worked back to Theate, who balloons a long-range shot high and wide.
56 min: Eintracht deal with this one pretty well, and soon enough the ball’s back at the feet of Mamardashvili.
55 min: Wirtz fancies the resulting free kick, just to the left of the D. With little backlift, he whips it up and over the wall, then back down towards the top-left corner. Zetterer is behind it all the way, and palms behind for a corner, which Gakpo will take.
54 min: Eintracht can’t keep hold of the ball and the crowd, so boisterous earlier on, has gone very quiet. And there’s more frustration as Amenda allows Gakpo to get goalside down the inside-left channel. He wrestles his man to the ground and goes into the book. “On colour-blindness, the NFL have it right,” begins Andy Flintoff. “One team is always in white with the other in colours, but the choice between white and colour is with the home team. It shouldn’t be beyond Uefa to mandate that in European competitions.”
52 min: Doan cynically yanks back the in-flight Jones and goes into the book.
51 min: Jones rolls a pass down the right. Ekitike spins and would be clear on goal but slips over. Eintracht then gift Liverpool another corner, Larsson with a loose backpass. Nothing comes of this one, but the hosts can’t keep inviting pressure like this. That opening goal feels like an awfully long time ago.
49 min: The corner comes in. Ekitike’s header is blocked. Wirtz steers a header back into the box down the inside-right channel. Chiesa swivels and whips an overhead kick inches wide of the left-hand post. Had that been on target, it was number four, because Zetterer was out of position. What an introduction that would have been!
48 min: Szoboszlai wins the ball out on the right and combines crisply with Wirtz, forcing Knauff into the concession of another corner. Szoboszlai to take.
47 min: Liverpool are instantly on the front foot again. Robertson whips a cross in from the left, looking for Chiesa. Zetterer reads the danger, nipping in ahead of the substitute to punch confidently clear.
Liverpool get the second half underway. They’ve made a change, sending on Chiesa in place of Isak. Whether that’s fitness-related or a tactical decision nobody’s sure.
The following Half-time Postbag is brought to you in living color on NBC Guardian Sport.
“These dark red Liverpool kits are playing havoc with my red/green colour blindness. They both look black to me. Who do I put a complaint in to at Uefa?!” – Mark Errett
“This has to be one of the worst kit clash for the colourblind (that’s one in 12 males, one in 50 females). It’s completely unwatchable. Dark short and dark shorts vs dark shorts and dark shorts! There are supposed to Uefa rules to stop this happening, and yet it keeps on happening, time and time again. It’s not that hard to sort out, FFS. On average there will be around two to three players on the pitch who will struggle to identify team mates correctly in their peripheral vision” – Pat O’Brien
Yes, this does seem a totally avoidable problem. The FA’s Colour Blindness In Football document picks black v red as one of the combinations that causes the greatest problem for colour-blind people. The other most troublesome combos are: red v green v orange; bright green v yellow; white v pastel colours; and blue v deep purple or pink.
Flick further through the pamphlet, and one of the combos listed under Best Practice is white v black. Liverpool’s second kit this season is technically ecru, a very light brown, but it would surely be close enough to white to make a huge difference to colour-blind viewers this evening.
HALF TIME: Eintracht Frankfurt 1-3 Liverpool
A selection of results involving Eintracht so far this season: 5-0, 4-1, 5-1, 3-4, 6-4, 1-5. Feels like one way or another, we’re heading for something similar tonight.
45 min +2: For a second, it looks as though Bradley is going to get past Gotze down the right, and deliver a cross for Isak in the middle. But he over-elaborates, allowing Theate to come across and help his pal. The pair team up to hustle Bradley off the ball. All of a sudden, Eintracht desperately need to hear the half-time whistle.
45 min: There will be four additional first-half minutes.
GOAL! Eintracht Frankfurt 1-3 Liverpool (Konate 44)
… and Konate, unmarked, six yards out, slams a header that Zetterer simply has no time to react to. Two corners, two headers, simple as that.
44 min: Isak tries to release Wirtz with a scooped pass down the right. Larsson should cushion a header back to his keeper, but panics and concedes a corner instead. Szoboszlai to take.
43 min: Koch is fine to continue.
42 min: Koch is down after being accidentally caught by Konate. On comes the physio.
40 min: Doan dribbles down the right and passes low through the box for Bahoya, who is free on the penalty spot! Or so he thinks. As he shapes a sidefooted shot towards the bottom left, Bradley appears from nowhere to slide-block. Great play all round. There is no way whatsoever this game is going to end 1-2. Both defences are an on-the-edge shambles.
GOAL! Eintracht Frankfurt 1-2 Liverpool (van Dijk 39)
… and headed home from close range by Van Dijk! Gakpo’s whippy delivery to the near post was on the money, and Van Dijk beat Koch all ends up to power goalwards from close range. What a turnaround!
38 min: Liverpool’s tails are up now. They win a couple of corners in quick succession. The second, coming in from the left, will be delivered by Gakpo.
36 min: The former Eintracht player Ekitike doesn’t celebrate the goal. But it was beautifully taken.
GOAL! Eintracht Frankfurt 1-1 Liverpool (Ekitike 35)
Doan and Brown combine cutely down the left but the latter’s pullback is nowhere near anyone in a black top. Robertson pings the ball immediately upfield, and Ekitike is clear on goal! Simple as that, because Eintracht had committed everyone upfield. He cuts across Koch, the only man anywhere near him, ensuring no challenge can be made, and drives a confident low shot under Zetterer and in!
33 min: This is better from Liverpool, as Gakpo delivers an inswinger from a deep position on the left. Bradley gets in ahead of Brown, and should score from six yards, but his downward header is too close to Zetterer, who is able to parry around the post for a corner, from which nothing comes.
31 min: We’re back to Liverpool dominating possession, but doing nothing in the final third. A cross comes in from the left, and Ekitike claims a penalty for handball when the ball rears up near Koch, but the referee immediately waves away the appeal.
29 min: Robertson – whose legs Kristensen’s shot whistled through – tries to find Ekitike with a low cross from the left. He’s forced to settle for a corner. Before it can be taken, Szoboszlai is given the what-for by the referee for his over-eager positioning. Then the set piece is dealt with easily by the hosts.
