Mohamed Salah made a point of telling Jurgen Klopp his favourite position after Liverpool scored twice late on to beat Napoli 2-0 on Tuesday night.
Salah broke the deadlock in the 85th minute at Anfield when he stabbed home after Darwin Nunez’s header had been saved by Alex Meret. And Liverpool doubled their lead deep into injury-time when Nunez repeated the trick from Virgil van Dijk’s initial effort.
It was a solid performance from Liverpool, who kept Napoli at bay and became the first team to beat them in 21 games – a run which stretched back to April. Klopp made four changes from the team which was beaten 2-1 by Leeds on Saturday and returned to his trademark 4-3-3 formation, with Salah on the right, Roberto Firmino in the middle and Curtis Jones on the left.
After playing a 4-4-2 diamond in recent weeks, Salah admitted that he enjoyed a return to the shape he is so used to playing in.
“It’s not my job, it’s the gaffer’s job,” he replied when asked by BT Sport if 4-3-3 makes things easier for him. “Yes,” he then added when asked if it feels more comfortable.
“Any position makes me comfortable. I’m happy about it. I’ve played the position for five or six years, so I have to say yes that position is the best for me. But I’m not the manager – the manager decides the tactics and as a player you have to follow the leader.”
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Salah was also relieved to find out that he had indeed been credited with the opening goal, which was confirmed by VAR. He said that, on the pitch, it wasn’t clear whether the ball had already crossed the line from Nunez’s header before he turned in after Meret’s save.
“Anyone can score, the most important thing is the team winning. As a striker, I like to score. Darwin likes to score. We did both,” he said. “I think it’s important. This win today will give us more confidence, especially because we played a good game with the ball, without the ball. We tried to recover the ball quickly. As you can see, in the league we’re not doing great, but hopefully we can give ourselves a little push. We just need to win more games in the league.”
Salah ended the night with a seventh Champions League goal of the season, but had a quiet game for most of the night against Napoli, with his only previous impact coming when he set up Thiago Alcantara to force a good stop from Meret in the first half. Napoli appeared to have taken the lead after the break when Leo Ostigard produced a diving header from a deep free-kick, but it was eventually ruled out for offside by VAR.
That reprieve allowed Liverpool to push forward following the introduction of Nunez for Curtis Jones in the 73rd minute. Their dominance from set pieces told in the closing stages, although Napoli still went through as Group A winners, despite seeing their 13-game winning streak broken.
