Liverpool are fluid. Liverpool are polyvalent. Liverpool press and sit, then strike like jet fighters. Maybe they really are, as Luis Enrique enthused before this game, “a perfect team”. But sometimes, well, sometimes you just need a really good goalkeeper too.
Alisson wasn’t just good here in the conventional sense, bullocking around his area like a giant, yolk-coloured blur making game-saving blocks and dives. He was, as Liverpool defended desperately at times, triumphantly good. This was goalkeeping as an act of performance, goalkeeping as counter-aggression. You really believe you’re going to win this? How much, would you say?
