Thursday, April 28, 2022 – 11:51 AM
ABU DHABI, April 28 / WAM / The Liverpool team made an important stride in its march to qualify for the Champions League final yesterday, after its deserved victory over Spanish club Via Real with two goals to nothing in the first leg of the semi-finals of the most powerful continental club championships in the world, which brought them together at a stadium Anfield in Liverpool.
It is expected that Liverpool will meet with Via Real again at the La Ceramica stadium, which can accommodate 25,000 spectators, next Tuesday, looking for a positive result that will lead it to the final to face the qualifiers from Manchester City and Real Madrid.
In the match between Liverpool and Via Real yesterday, the English team dominated the game in most of the meeting, and missed many opportunities to score throughout the two halves, while the Via Real team relied on counter-attacks. Among the exciting numbers that emerged from yesterday’s match, German coach Jurgen Klopp won 100% of the semi-final matches he played at his home in the Champions League, equal with Marcello Lippi and Ottmar Hitzfeld.
Commenting on the match yesterday, Klopp said: “The result is dangerous, as things have not been resolved, and there is still another match on the land of Via Real, and maintaining focus is a necessity to maintain superiority in the aggregate of the two matches.” He added, “We have to play the return match like going, because the atmosphere will be difficult at La Ceramica, where the Villa Real team will fight for victory and qualification, and although the first half came out without goals from Liverpool, we performed well in it, and wasted more than A real chance to score, while the opponent managed to threaten our goal in some glances.”
One of the distinguished figures of the Liverpool team is that its victory over Villa Real yesterday raises its tally to 20 wins in the last 24 games it played in all competitions. The goal that Mohamed Salah made for Mane yesterday (the second goal) raised the balance of the African duo to 7 goals in the Champions League that were recorded for the Liverpool team in partnership, a number that only Ryan Giggs achieved with Wayne Rooney in the Manchester City team, and Salah with Firmino before.
Sadio Mane raised his goal tally in the Champions League playoffs to goal number 14, the best balance for any African player, equal to Ivorian player Didier Drogba.
One of the exciting numbers for Mohamed Salah, who was behind the decisive pass in the second goal, to his Senegalese colleague Sadio Mane, is that this goal bears the number 14 of the goals Salah made with assists in various competitions of the season.
Salah is ranked second as the player most threatening Villa Real’s goal with 4 shots, where he was surpassed by his colleague Luis Diaz, who shot 5 balls against the opponent’s goal.
The Spanish player Thiago Alcantara, the Liverpool playmaker, was one of the stars of the match in his movements, passes and shots, one of which hit the post during the first half. Before when I was with Barcelona, we have to realize that we are playing the semi-finals of the Champions League against a difficult opponent, who forced us in yesterday’s match to search for spaces ourselves, which led us to victory.”
Alcantara added: “We don’t have time to rest, we will turn directly to thinking about our next league match against Newcastle next Saturday, and then we will go to travel directly to Spain.
Wam/Amin Al-Double/Dina Omar