Liverpool come from behind to win convincingly in Milan

Photo: Stephen Gormley (Red Eye Photo Agency)

Liverpool bounced back from the loss of an early goal to win 3-1 in the San Siro against AC Milan in the new-style Champions League

The atmosphere inside the historic San Siro Stadium (officially called the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza Stadium) was electric despite the many empty seats due to Milan’s poor start to the league season and the very high pricing of home-end tickets (prices were double that of Serie A games). UEFA have at least capped the prices for away fans for this season in all of their competitions (€60 for Champions league ties) and 5,000 Liverpool fans were there to witness this spectacle. The San Siro is one of the great stadiums of football but is showing signs of its age with current plans underway for a redevelopment with a reduced capacity of 60,000 inspired by city landmarks, to be known as The Cathedral. However there is also a chance both Milan giants AC Milan and Inter Milan will go their separate ways and build separate new stadia instead of continuing to share a new one.

Liverpool and AC Milan have had some memorable matches in the Champions League, most notably contesting the finals in 2005 (which Liverpool famously came back to win from 3-0 down at half time) and 2007 (when Milan got their revenge by winning the “re-match final” in Athens). UEFA have since changed the format of the competition and this time Liverpool were facing Milan on the first night of the new group stage format involving 8 matches for each team (4 home ties and 4 away ties against a different set of teams) with results for all 32 teams in the competition being accumulated in a single league to decide who progresses and seedings for the knock-out round stages.

Despite Milan’s poor recent league performance they got off to great start in the match. Van Dijk cleared off the line in the second minute for Liverpool and then just a minute later Pulisic was played through on the right. He cut in and beat Allison with a shot hit low and hard into the far side of the goal to open the scoring. Temporarily restoring the faith of the Rossoneri.

The pace of the game was relentless as Liverpool fought hard to get back into the game. Mo Salah hit a right footed shot that cannoned off the underside of the crossbar. Milan were by now on the back foot and Calabria was the first name in the Norwegian referee Eskas’ book in the 22^nd minute after he slid in on Gakpo. From the resulting free kick, Alexander-Arnold swung in a cross for Konate to rise and head home to equalize for the English side.

Liverpool were now dominating the game and Salah went very close to going ahead when he hit the bar for a second time. Liverpool could sense blood and this time a corner kick from Tsimkas found Virgil Van Dyke who rose above the defence to head home and put Liverpool in front.

Liverpool came out in the second half and looked like they meant business with Jota and Gakpo running riot. Milan suffered a further setback when their French international keeper Maignan went off injured in the 65th minute after a challenge from Jota. His replacement was 19-year old Lorenzo Torriani who was making his debut for Milan. Just a couple of minutes later he was picking the ball out of the Milan net after Szoboszlai side-footed home a cross from Gakpo from the left wing. Despite a brief flurry of chances in the last few minutes it was too little too late for Milan.

After losing to Nottingham Forest at the weekend Arne Slot will be heartened by the character his team showed after falling behind early on. Liverpool have now beaten Milan in five of the six competitive games between the sides, and have won all three games they have played against them at the San Siro. It was a great side in a difficult away tie on their quest to get to the 17-points mark in the new format of the Champions League group stage, which is the expected number of points needed to seal a top eight place to go straight to the last 16 in March.