Liverpool achieved the score of the evening in the Champions League » “Cormorants” qualified for the round of 16
Liverpool won their last Champions League group game 6-0 with Qarabag at Anfield. The “Cormorants” thus obtained direct qualification to the round of 16 of the competition, finishing in 3rd place in the ranking, below Arsenal and Bayern Munich.
Alexis Mac Allister with a “double”, Florian Wirtz, Mohamed Salah, Hugo Ekitike and Federico Chiesa signed the successes of the “cormorants”, but Arne Slot received another blow from the start of the game, when Jeremie Frimpong was injured and left the field in the 4th minute.
Chronicle by Oana Dușmănescu » Liverpool, white set with Qarabag!
Liverpool, the 4th place in the UCL before the last stage, received the visit of the Azerbaijani team Qarabag, located in an interesting 18th place, having Zoubir in the team, a striker who also played for Petrolul Ploiești a decade ago. The champion of England beat a team that entered the field already beaten by its own fear 6-0 (2-0).
The game at Anfield started poorly for Frimpong. The defender of the “cormorants” most likely suffered a muscle injury, requiring the intervention of doctors, being replaced by Endo in the 3rd minute and leaving the right defensive position in Slot's team even more empty.
In the 9th minute, Camilo Duran (Qarabag) arrived in the box of the champion of England, intercepting a pass and firing towards the center of the goal. But Alisson provided a providential save, saving his team from an unexpected and premature opening of the scoring.
Five minutes later, Salah got a good look at Gakpo, unleashing a beautiful ball, but the Dutchman couldn't beat goalkeeper Kochalski.
The ghost team from the ghost town
Seconds later, however, from a corner taken by Szoboszlai, MacAllister headed the ball into the goal after two inspired deflections by Ekitike and Van Dijk to make it 1-0 in a game almost entirely dominated by Liverpool.
In the 21st minute, Wirtz scored after a beautiful penetration by Frenchman Ekitike, who has been making and breaking spells at Anfield lately. 2-0 for the hosts, and the cosmopolitan formation from Azerbaijan, also scared of its own shadow, took a step back in front of the opponent far beyond its measure.
36th minute – Robertson's shot went wide of Qarabag's goal, a team that now plays its home games in Baku, although its history began in Agdam, a ghost town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where it has not played since 1993.
Sheltered by the two goals and the authority with which they dominated the meeting, Liverpool gave the impression that they no longer want to force, taking a breath of oxygen after the poor matches in the Premier League and before the games that await them in the next two stages, with Newcastle and Manchester City.
Only those who didn't want to didn't score
In the 42nd minute, Ekitike was also one step away from scoring, but the opposing defense deflected the ball just wide. The first half ended 2-0, with Liverpool's constant siege proving a major factor of intimidation for the visitors.
The second half of the game started on the same note: Liverpool overwhelming in attack, Qurbanov's men trying to puff themselves up to look bigger.
In the 50th minute, Salah increased the gap to 3-0 with an unstoppable execution, after a shot from the edge of the box, pushed to the scheme by Szoboszlai.
7 minutes later, Ekitike was the author of a quick counter-attack from midfield, launched by Van Dijk, having fun with the shaky Azeri defence, scoring for a more than deserved 4-0 and sending the Reds' gallery into a frenzy.
And then 5-0, in the 61st minute – MacAllister once again pierced through the opponents' transparent defense, seemingly taking revenge for everything that went wrong this season and relentlessly taking the air out of the lungs of this week's UEFA Champions League visitors.
Liverpool continued to crowd the Azerbaijan champions into their box mercilessly, not giving them the slightest chance of even a taste of glory at Anfield. The guests were soft, pampered, not aggressive, far from Liverpool in terms of geography and football.
MacAllister, also from Argentina, was close to a hat-trick, in the 88th minute, after an ideal pass from Mohamed Salah. But in the last minute of the game, Chiesa did not remain indebted and also fatally shot in the goal of an opponent too small for the champion of England, already qualified among the first 16 of the UCL.
