Vinicius Junior and Karim Benzema, two stars for Real Madrid, each scored two goals at Anfield on Tuesday, putting Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool on the verge of being eliminated from the Champions League.
Tuesday's 5-2 defeat of Liverpool by Real Madrid may have been much worse if there hadn't been a regulation adjustment.
The defending European champions once again humiliated Jurgen Klopp's team, who had a dreadful evening at Anfield. Real Madrid is about to eliminate Liverpool from the Champions League for the fourth time in six seasons.
Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah gave the Reds a two-goal advantage on Merseyside, but Vinicius Junior's brace gave the visitors an equalizer just before halftime. During the break, Carlo Ancelotti's team completely destroyed Liverpool.
Before Karim Benzema scored twice to give Real a three-goal lead, Eder Militao's header made it 3-2. If Liverpool wants to keep their chances of qualifying for Europe alive, they will have a mountain to climb when they visit Madrid on March 15.
Real would have had a significant lead in the past, nearly impregnable. That's because UEFA used to apply an away goals rule in the Champions League, which stated that if the tie ended up being tied on aggregate, the team with the most away goals would advance.
Because Real has five away goals in the bank, if the rule were still in place, Liverpool would need to score at least four goals in the second leg at the Bernabeu to have any hope of moving on. Yet, Real will only have a three-goal edge in the following game.
Real Madrid humiliated Liverpool on Tuesday.
Beginning with the 2021/22 season, the contentious regulation was eliminated. During the 2018–19 season, Tottenham memorably overcame Manchester City in the quarterfinals and Ajax in the semifinals, both victories coming thanks to the away goals rule.
The rule drew criticism since it forced home teams to play defensively out of concern for losing. In order to promote more attacking football, many fans wanted the rule to be eliminated. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin agreed to the change in June 2021.
At the time, Ceferin acknowledged that "the away goals rule has been an intrinsic feature of UEFA tournaments since it was implemented in 1965." "Yet, throughout the past few years, it has been discussed at numerous UEFA meetings whether or not to abolish it.
Notwithstanding divergent opinions, many coaches, fans, and other football stakeholders have questioned the rule's fairness and stated a support for its repeal.
At full-time, Jordan Henderson claimed to have "mixed sentiments." Quite challenging, the Liverpool captain told BT Sport. Summarizing it right after the game is challenging. Mixed emotions annoyance at the outcome. We played well for the whole of the first half and were unlucky to be tied at the break. We made far too many errors.
Tonight, Real Madrid punished us repeatedly. Their excellence was responsible for a lot. Definitely, we didn't help ourselves. We didn't play strong enough defense against Real's third goal. There were a few balls we could have handled better after that. At that time, the game was lost to us.
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