Liverpool thrash ‘that f**ker’ on another evening of Anfield celebration against Real Madrid

The last two Champions League finals Liverpool lost were determined by drastically contrasting levels of goalkeeping absurdity.

Loris Karius will forever be defined by his ruthless undressing against Real Madrid in 2018, when a two-season narrative over his incongruity in a rapidly improving Liverpool team ate itself and jumped the shark on the grandest stage.

Thibaut Courtois was, as Jurgen Klopp later put it, “that f**ker” with “12 hands” who prevented the Reds from exacting revenge four years later with a man-of-the-match performance in Paris.

Those are not demons which can be exorcised in games contained within this protracted Champions League group phase but Arne Slot does appear to have the answer to a question Liverpool wrestled with for almost a decade.

Between October 2014 and March 2023, Liverpool faced Real Madrid on eight occasions in four different stages of the Champions League without winning a single time. Slot has beaten them in consecutive seasons without so much as conceding.

And while last year it was the runaway Premier League leaders conquering the second-best team in Spain, 12 months later the stuttering English champions continued their road to rediscovery with a deserved win over the early pacesetters in La Liga.

Alexis Mac Allister even reprised his role as unlikely goalscorer, while Conor Bradley shone without even having to clatter Kylian Mbappe.

It was Vinicius Junior who was mentally and spiritually scythed at Anfield this time. Bradley won the battle, the war and pretty much every tackle, their contest perhaps best summed up by the booking the Real Madrid forward incurred for pulling the Liverpool defender back on a quick breakaway.

An exceptional Bradley display was only magnified by the ten-minute cameo afforded to Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose every touch was jeered culminating in his final action: an aimless stoppage-time cross into an unmanned penalty area which ultimately trickled out for a throw-in to raucous cheers.

Alexander-Arnold said before the game that “it was destined for this fixture to come,” but Real still seemed to be caught entirely off guard by it. Theirs was a bizarrely disjointed display, especially in a second half Liverpool dominated.

It was only “that f**ker” Courtois who kept them in it for so long, saving from Dominik Szoboszlai, Virgil van Dijk and Hugo Ekitike as if it was Mo Salah at the Stade de France.

Powered by a rare and potent level of magnificent pettiness, Courtois continued his crusade for more “respect” in England with a show of defiance which must have triggered painful flashbacks for some.

But it had to be that in this particularly ludicrous Premier League season, Liverpool harnessed the potential of what many in their number have ridiculed and derided for weeks.

Real Madrid might have won 15 European Cups, but they can’t defend a sublime in-swinging free-kick landed perfectly on the head of 5ft 9ins Mac Allister.

The one hope Real had was divine intervention. Or at least VAR, which corroborated that Mac Allister had timed his run impeccably. After Liverpool had a free-kick checked for a penalty after a Szoboszlai shot deflected off Aurelien Tchouameni’s arm and out for what could also have been a corner, but was eventually downgraded to a Real drop ball, the visitors might have expended their share of luck in the first half.

Liverpool needed no such virtue. This was a confident, composed and concentrated display, their best of the season. If the win over Aston Villa was a tentative step forward, controlling one of the strongest teams in the world so assuredly was a substantial leap forward.

The defence looks more settled for Andy Robertson’s presence. The energy and bite in midfield has returned. Florian Wirtz impressed on the left. And the game was managed exceptionally well in all phases.

As Klopp said in his lament of the phenomenal Courtois, “we play that game and we shoot every three minutes on their goal but their keeper has 12 hands and then they score that goal and we talk afterwards about the one mistake where we could have defended better”.

History never came close to repeating itself because of how thoroughly Bradley shut Vinicius down, but also because Liverpool barely made a mistake even after earning their breakthrough.

While this can never represent proper retribution for the heartache suffered on far bigger stages against this team and these players, Liverpool can celebrate emerging from a genuine crisis to shed even more of their crippling historic inferiority complex.

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