These are strange times for Liverpool Football Club, still, and until anyone specifically says otherwise, the champions of England. It is a mark of where the team is that on an oddly tension-free night in Paris there were reasons to be pleased, but also not to be pleased about being pleased.
Pleased that Liverpool’s players didn’t give up or stop trying. So that’s a tick. Pleased that they only lost 2-0 against a Paris Saint-Germain team who were able to approach this first leg carelessly, to showboat a little, to approach the scoring of a goal in the style of a temperamental high-end Parisian pastry chef, always trying to create the perfect deconstructed mille-feuille tour de vanille infinite, when all you really need is a biscuit.
And pleased at the end that rather than passively aggressively taunting the travelling fans, Dominik Szoboszlai instead walked off down the tunnel alone while his teammates wandered over in pursuit of Arne Slot, out there pointedly making nice, that lovely soft round head gleaming a little sadly under the Paris lights like a weak spring moon.
This will qualify as an improvement. The tie is still alive. Perhaps some kind of deep Anfield voodoo can be summoned next week. But at the end of this Liverpool have lost five of their last eight games as the season narrows. They’re fifth in the league, but only three points ahead of Everton in eighth. More to the point, Paris Saint-Germain just looked like a far superior football team.
It is an unfair comparison for most clubs. You don’t have to be a single-city petro-project glamour toy with an economically irrational funding model to be good at football. But it doesn’t hurt. There are no limits here. This team should always have been this good.
The issue really is the way PSG were so much better, by highlighting the extent of Liverpool’s regression, the lack of pattern and structure in the team. What is this thing meant to be? What does a Liverpool goal look like anyway? What is the complete Slot 2.0 Liverpool performance?
The moment of the game was PSG’s second goal on 66 minutes, scored by the sublime, unignorably entertaining Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who took an instant forward pass from João Neves then did three brilliant things in the space of five seconds.
First he surged inside two Liverpool players, all elite torque, balance, handling, not really seeming to run or really move his legs, but gliding at annihilating speed. Then there was a refusal to go over as Ryan Gravenberch hacked at his heels.
Kvaratskhelia is such an unusual footballer. His body is shaped oddly. He seems to have semi-tubular legs, ankles as thick as his calves, a mooching, socks-down presence, like the drummer in a 1990s indie band has reluctantly admitted to being the world’s greatest maverick left winger.
Finally he eased past Joe Gomez, swerved away from Giorgi Mamardashvili, who just squatted in front of him, mesmerised by this gliding figure with its oddly fuzzy, downy, woodland quality, like a very clever hedgehog has learned to walk on its hind legs and perform high-speed tricks with a football. The right-foot shot into the net was another way of showing off his balance, not breaking stride as he ran off to celebrate, leaving Milos Kerkez in the net and the entire Liverpool defence exploded behind him.
It was probably enough to euthanise this tie out of existence. And by the end 2-0 felt like something to be pleased about, given Liverpool had come to Paris with fear in their hearts after the evisceration by Manchester City, like a boxer sat on his stool, legs already wobbled, dreading the bell. That note of fear that doesn’t sit well. Has a Liverpool team ever progressed this far in the European Cup with no real sense they have a chance of actually winning it?
Paris had been a lovely sunlit place on Wednesday. The pre-match show was fun and pantomime fierce in the classic Paris style; flashing lights, smoke, a wildly feral PA announcer shout-growling the names of the PSG players like a wine-ravaged werewolf in its death throes. But the opening exchanges were basically men in red shirts running around quite near a football match.
Liverpool’s plan was to press high, Slot up on his touchline from the opening seconds, whirling his arms, seeing spaces, imagined disasters. Slot in his early months was shrewd, smooth, round, twinkly, like an effusive Belgian hotelier. These days he seems bloodshot and fretful, trussed into his slacks and bomber jacket, like a pub singer who had a hit in the 1980s.
Here PSG were just so much more assured, so much more certain in their movement, so in control of the ball at times there was a sense of show, of enjoying it a little too much. They really could have been four goals up with more ruthless finishing. And from here Liverpool will contemplate next week, not so much with hope, but with hope of saving some sense of themselves, of still looking like a team.