Chapter 542: Anfield Again II
The match started at a tempo that belonged in a different sport. Not football. Something faster. Something more violent. Both teams pressing from the first whistle, the ball moving between the two presses like a ball in a pinball machine, the transitions so quick that the eye could barely follow and the brain could barely process.
In the third minute, Salah received from Firmino on the right side of the Palace box and hit a shot that Pope tipped onto the post.
The Egyptian’s speed in transition was terrifying, his movement between Sakho and Chilwell creating angles that shouldn’t have existed, his finishing instinct pure and undiluted. Pope’s save was instinctive, a reaction rather than a decision, his right hand deflecting the ball onto the woodwork with a speed that Rebecca would later clock at 0.22 seconds.
In the sixth minute, Palace hit back. Kovačić received from Konaté under pressure from Henderson, turned him with the hip-drop, and played a long ball to Zaha on the left.
Zaha drove at Alexander-Arnold, the twenty-year-old right-back who had been brilliant all season but who had not yet learned how to deal with a winger who could go both ways with equal menace.
Zaha went outside, reached the byline, and cut the ball back to Benteke. The Belgian’s shot was blocked by Van Dijk. The Dutchman’s leg extending, his body positioned, his reading of the play so precise that the block felt less like defending and more like chess.
The match was extraordinary. Both teams were attacking. Both teams were pressing. Both teams were refusing to sit and absorb. It was football in its purest, most aggressive, most beautiful form.
The ball was a conversation between two philosophies, Klopp’s relentless intensity and Walsh’s tactical fluidity, and the conversation was being conducted at a volume that made the Anfield floodlights seem redundant.
In the nineteenth minute, Liverpool scored.
Salah. Because of course it was Salah. He received from Robertson on the left, cut inside onto his favoured left foot, and curled a shot from the edge of the box that beat Pope at his far post.
The technique was absurd. The angle was impossible. The finish was the finish of a man who had scored twenty-three goals this season and who treated the far post the way a poet treated a metaphor: as something to be explored, not feared.
Liverpool 1-0 Crystal Palace. Salah. 19 minutes.
The Kop erupted. The noise crashed down onto the pitch. The banner swayed. "WALSH CAME ONCE. HE WON’T WIN TWICE."
On the touchline, I stood still. Sarah, beside me, said: "Their press is higher than we expected. Henderson is pushing into our half when we build. The space is behind him."
Marcus, through the earpiece: "Henderson is fifteen yards ahead of his usual position. Kovačić has the corridor if he can receive on the half-turn."
I relayed nothing. Kovačić had already seen it. The Croatian was already adjusting, dropping deeper to receive, drawing Henderson forward, creating the space that Sarah and Marcus had identified. The system adapting. The identity holding.
In the twenty-seventh minute, Palace equalised.
Kovačić received from Sakho on the halfway line. Henderson pressed. Kovačić turned him, the ball moving from left to right, his body rotating, Henderson committed to a space the Croatian was no longer occupying. The corridor opened. Kovačić carried the ball ten yards, drawing Lovren out of position, and played a pass to Rodríguez that was so perfectly weighted it seemed to arrive at the Colombian’s feet by prior arrangement.
Rodríguez did not take a touch. He played a first-time pass with the outside of his right boot, the ball bending around Van Dijk’s cover position and arriving at Zaha’s feet in the box.
Zaha, who had been drifting from the left to the centre, who had been waiting for exactly this moment, who had scored at Anfield nine months ago and who intended to score again, shifted the ball to his right foot and finished low past Karius into the far corner.
Liverpool 1-1 Crystal Palace. Zaha. 27 minutes.
The away end, two thousand people in the Anfield Road end, produced a noise that had no right to exist in a stadium where they were outnumbered twenty to one. Lorraine was in there. Her new Sprinter wasn’t ready yet.
She had driven the twelve from Peckham in a hired minibus, the Palace crest sellotaped to the dashboard because Lorraine did not travel without the badge. Malcolm was in the front seat. Sharon was behind the driver. The twelve were standing, singing, their voices joining two thousand others in the corner of Anfield.
The match did not settle. The match refused to settle. Liverpool attacked. Palace attacked. Salah hit the bar in the thirty-first. Neves hit the post in the thirty-fourth. Firmino had a header saved by Pope.
Navas had a shot blocked by Robertson. The two teams were playing football at a level that the Monday Night Football cameras were struggling to contain, the action so constant, so intense, so technically brilliant that the Sky Sports commentary team had stopped trying to analyse and had started simply describing, the way you describe a storm: not by explaining the meteorology but by saying what it looks like.
In the thirty-eighth minute, Liverpool scored again.
Mané. The Senegalese, who had been quiet, who had been tracked by Wan-Bissaka with the focused determination that had defined their first encounter nine months ago, found a yard of space. One yard. Between Wan-Bissaka and Chilwell. A gap that existed for approximately one and a half seconds. Mané received from Firmino, turned, and shot. The ball flew past Pope’s right hand and into the net.
Liverpool 2-1 Crystal Palace. Mané. 38 minutes.
Wan-Bissaka punched the ground. Not because he had made a mistake. Because the gap had existed for one and a half seconds and Sadio Mané had found it. The margins at this level were not measured in yards. They were measured in milliseconds. And Mané had beaten the millisecond.
Half-time. 2-1. In the dressing room, Tomás was in his corner. The camera rolled.
I was calm. Not performed calm. Real calm. The calm of a man who had been losing at Anfield before and who had come back to win.
"We are playing the best football in England tonight. Both of us. Liverpool and Palace. This is what football looks like when two teams refuse to be afraid of each other." I looked around the room. "They’re winning because they’ve taken their moments. We’re losing because we’ve missed ours. The quality is even. The courage is even. The difference is efficiency."
I looked at Kovačić. "Mateo. You’re destroying Henderson. Keep doing it. Every time you turn him, the corridor opens. Rodríguez lives in that corridor. Feed him."
Sarah stepped forward. "Their full-backs are pushing higher than any full-backs I’ve ever analysed. Robertson is ten yards into our half when they attack. Alexander-Arnold is fifteen. The spaces behind them are enormous. If we can win the ball in their half, the counter-attack is a two-versus-two."
Bray: "They’ve stopped tracking Dann at corners. He’s free on the back post. KB-29. Same as Arsenal."
I looked at the room. "Forty-five minutes. At Anfield. Against one of the best teams in Europe. This is why you play football. This is the match you dreamed about when you were ten years old and kicking a ball against a wall." I paused. "Enjoy it. And score."