AC Milan vs Liverpool LIVE: Champions League result and reaction as Arne Slot’s men complete comeback win

Liverpool have won the competition six times, most recently in 2019, in an all-English final against Tottenham. Will Arne Slot lead them to a seventh triumph this season?

The AC Milan head coach said: “Liverpool are a great team, one of the strongest in Europe with very strong positional play and with individuality that we all know.

“We have to be defensively perfect to win.

2We can’t make mistakes; otherwise, they score goals. We have to be a complete team to defend and then attack with stability. Tomorrow’s match is an opportunity to show our improvements.

“I’m sure the fans will have an impact on tomorrow’s game. Their support is important for us. We need their love.”

When Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin attends the first games of the new Champions League this week, it will be with a considerable security detail. This has led to grumbles from federation staff, especially since very few people outside football know what he even looks like. There have probably only been two moments when the Slovenian official was properly in the public eye.

One was when the Super League was launched in April 2021 and Ceferin admirably defended the spirit of European football in a defiant media appearance, all while lambasting executives as “snakes” and “liars”. Less publicised from that day was the fact Uefa were also in the process of approving the changes to the Champions League we are going to see enacted this week.

It is safe to say that AC Milan forward, Alvaro Morata, is excited about taking on Liverpool this evening. He spoke in the build-up to the match about how big games like this tend to go down in history.

Morata said: “Since I signed for this club, I’ve been imagining playing a match like this. This game could be a semi-final or a final.

“The desire to do well and make the fans proud is at its highest. Games like tomorrow’s are the ones that make history, and we can’t wait to play.

“The Champions League is the Champions League; it doesn’t matter how or when you get there, it’s where the best teams in Europe compete. We are very motivated.”

“He’s a great goalkeeper. He has done incredibly well for three, four, five years.

“Since he came to Milan, he has always played wonderfully, and with the French national team he has replaced a great goalkeeper (Hugo Lloris). He is a very physical player – quick, technical.”

Alisson Becker, the Liverpool goalkeeper, took on media duties alongside his manager Arne Slot and spoke about what it feels like to be playing Champions League football again.

He said: “Imagine not doing something you really like doing for a year, and how much you’d be looking forward to doing it again.

“That’s the way we feel. Playing in the Champions League is one of the reasons I came to Europe from Brazil. We will do our best to try and win it.”

Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker has called on football’s authorities to speak to players about their welfare as the Reds prepare to start an expanded Champions League campaign.

Uefa’s elite club-level competition now involves 36 teams, which means an extra two matches in a group stage which now does not finish until the end of January as opposed to mid-December.

“For the supporters, it is amazing. More games, more bigger games, big teams against each other,” he said ahead of the clash against AC Milan in the San Siro.

“For us players as well, it is good that you are going to play against the best in Europe - and it is always a good idea to add some games to the calendar that is not busy... I am being ironic a little bit.

“Sometimes nobody asks the players what they think about adding more games so maybe our opinion does not matter.

“But everybody knows what we think about having more games. Everybody is tired of that but we have to bring those kind of things on side and stay focused on the big challenge we have here.”

AC Milan XI: Maignan, Calabria, Tomori, Fofana, T. Hernandez; Loftus-Cheek, Reijnders, Pavlovic; Pulisic, Morata, Rafael Leao

Liverpool XI: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Konate, Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Gravenberch, Mac Allister, Szoboszlai; Salah, Jota, Gakpo

As star players approach the new Champions League season this week, there are still many who don’t get the new format. Uefa even joked about it in its promotional video at the draw. The players are far from alone in this, with plenty of fans and even club executives having the same discussion.

It could be argued this is a real problem for the basic functioning of a competition, not to mention how it represents the needless complication of a sport that is historically popular due to its simplicity. There is still hope within Uefa that everyone will understand once the reality of the games and the table take shape in front of their eyes. That’s quite a rare justification but then, this whole change represents quite a leap. It also represents the start of an era where our understanding and expectations of how football works will be completely scrambled.