Liverpool finish smooth passage past Porto but tougher Champions League challenges await
Liverpool 0 Porto 0 (agg 5-0): Jurgen Klopp told his team they had a job to do but in truth the job was already done in Portugal
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Your support makes all the difference.“There is a job to finish,” Jurgen Klopp told his players in his programme notes, but Liverpool’s work here was done from the first whistle.
No team had ever overturned a five-goal first-leg deficit in the Champions League at the start of the night and Porto did not come at all close to setting a precedent as Liverpool’s rout at the Estadio do Dragao three weeks ago comfortably carried them through to the quarter-finals.
This goalless draw was a strange game, not so much a football match but an argument for automatic byes when one team finds themselves in such a commanding position after playing the first leg away from home.
On a night of little intensity and even fewer chances, both sides simply went through the motions until, inevitably, Liverpool's passage to the last eight was secured. It had never been in doubt.
Klopp suggested he would make only “one, two, three changes” but in the end it was five, with Mohamed Salah among those to drop out ahead of this weekend’s trip to Old Trafford. For the visitors, centre-half Diego Reyes was the sole survivor from the first-leg mauling as manager Sergio Conceicao acknowledged the insurmountable scale of the task at hand.
This much-changed Porto line-up at least did a better job of keeping the Champions League’s most potent attack at bay at least, especially in a languid first half played out with little incident.
It said much about the lack of urgency on both sides that the pre-match minute’s silence provided one of the more interesting flashpoints. Sections of Porto’s support were incapable of staying quiet for Davide Astori, the late Fiorentina and Italy defender who died aged 31 on Sunday. The rest of Anfield paid their respects, then jeered their guests.
Events on the pitch in the first half were not nearly as bad-tempered though and only Sadio Mané came close to stirring this second leg from its slumber. After latching onto an incisive James Milner ball, Liverpool’s hat-trick hero from the Estadio do Dragao fired firmly past Iker Casillas but against the base of the post.
Liverpool thus went into the break goalless but still wholly comfortable, their visitors having registered just one wayward shot on goal. Loris Karius was eventually called into action shortly after the restart but had little problem in pushing Majeed Waris’ long-distance effort wide.
Roberto Firmino was fancied to break the deadlock when Jordan Henderson showed vision to slip the in-form forward in through on goal, but Porto’s back-tracking centre-half Felipe nipped in to block his effort as he bore down on Casillas.
The biggest cheer of the night was saved for Salah, who Klopp introduced with just over a quarter-of-an-hour remaining, and the Egyptian soon raised the decibels around Anfield again. The substitute’s cross from the right evaded all in the Porto penalty area save Milner, but he could only direct his header straight at Casillas.
The visitors threatened most towards the close, with Sergio Oliveira seeing one deflected effort dip wickedly over Karius’s bar, but Conceicao’s side offered nothing as substantial as Danny Ings' late header that Casillas did well to stop.
Frustration for Ings, still waiting for his first goal since returning from a two-year injury lay-off, but job done for Liverpool. The quarter-finals will surely bring a much tougher test.
Liverpool (4-3-3): Karius; Gomez, Lovren, Matip, Moreno; Milner, Henderson, Can; Lallana, Firmino, Mané. Substitutes: Mignolet, Van Dijk, Klavan, Alexander-Arnold, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Salah, Ings.
Porto (4-4-1-1): Casillas; Maxi Pereira, Felipe, Reyes, Diogo Dalot; Corona, Oliver, André André, Waris; Costa; Aboubakar. Substitutes: Jose Sa, Brahimi, Paciencia, Ricardo, Otavio, Oliveira, Mata.
Referee: F Zwayer (Germany)
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