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It all started with James Milner throwing a serve down the right side, 10 yards or so into the Leicester City half with 39 minutes and 16 seconds left.
His pitch found Naby Keita, who threw the ball forward on the volley. It was Roberto Firmino, who, boxed in by nothing less than five Leicester’s players managed to push the ball safely towards Milner. He then handed it back to Joel Matip, who passed it to Fabinho, who passed it to Gini Wijnaldum, who then found Milner on the right side once more.
However, this was not an ordinary passage of possession game. When the clock struck 40 minutes and 46 seconds, the ball was in the back of the net by Kasper Schmeichel through Diogo Jota’s head to make Liverpool 2-0 on the night.
In the 90 seconds between Milner kicking off and Jota kicking off, Liverpool’s 10 outfield players had touched the ball at least once, with 30 passes completed on the play, the longest consecutive passing sequence he led. one goal from Liverpool in the Premier League since Opta began collecting that data 14 years ago.
Despite Liverpool being famous for their electrifying speed in the transition under Jürgen Klopp, how phenomenal they have become as a passing and moving team is still unnoticed, and this supreme step of the game was the main evidence as such. It’s also a necessity, because as teams have learned to defend more and more deeply and more compactly against Liverpool in recent years, they have had to evolve to find new ways to open a low block when space is tight. .
It’s a confluence of so many complex elements combined that makes goals like these so special: patience, rhythm, vision, synchronized movement, precision. Only by looking at the entire 90 seconds in its entirety is it possible to appreciate the full extent of its brightness.
In sequences of this nature, Liverpool not only passes by. They are circulating the ball from one side of the field to the other with sharpness and precision, continually propelling Leicester to cross, then back again, then back on the other side, and so on. Each time they do so, it drains a little more energy from the opponent’s legs and repeatedly tests their collective concentration levels.
Inevitably, after a certain number of shuttles, they can’t move that abruptly and their defensive form starts to loosen up a bit. Everything is by design, as Liverpool continues to move the ball, waiting for spaces to open and take advantage of the passing lanes. It is no coincidence that they score so many goals in matches in the lead-up to half-time, because teams have spent the vast majority of the first 45 minutes physically and mentally exhausted from the task of trying to contain them.
After a minute and 20 seconds of patient possession play, all but one of Leicester’s outfield players have been sucked over to the right side, leaving swaths of open space on the opposite flank. Curtis Jones sees this and throws a Trent Alexander-Arnold-style cross pass to select Andy Robertson, who suddenly finds himself head-to-head with Marc Albrighton.
At this point, Leicester is stretched, so instead of taking the easy option of playing a simple pass back to Fabinho, Robertson goes for the jugular and makes his way through Albrighton. As soon as he does, even before preparing to cross, Jota is aware of the situation, takes a dive into the box, and his run tells Robertson exactly where to put the ball.
Such is its quality in those positions that Robertson folds it perfectly across the aisle between James Maddison and Wesley Fofana for Jota to attack, the kind of ball that is hit with such speed and precision that it is impossible enough to defend.
Jota still has a lot to do, but after stealing a march from Christian Fuchs, his header digs into the ground and goes through the goal far enough that he is already at the back of the net when Schmeichel can react, increasing his account. . to eight goals for the season already (an average of one every 71 minutes in the league and the Champions League for Liverpool so far).
While the Portuguese is firmly on a trajectory towards genuine world-class status following his scintillating impact since arriving from the Wolves in the summer (for what now seems like a ridiculously cheap price tag of £ 45 million), the assist from Robertson was a reflection of a player in the senior team. Peak of his powers: his 31st league assist for the club, which is unsurprisingly the most of any defense in Europe’s top five leagues at that time.
What unfolded in those 90 seconds between the ball that entered the field of play and the goal that was scored clearly encapsulated the game as a whole: total and absolute dominance by a Liverpool devastated by injuries, to the point that the Brendan Rodgers’ team, touted by many as capable of scalping here, were reduced to mere spectators, powerless to do anything with the magnificence unfolding in front of their very eyes.
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