Liverpool picked a bad time to lose its first European match this season.
The Reds’ dream of claiming a Champions League-Premier League double title this year is dead after Paris Saint-Germain stunned the former’s top seed in a penalty shootout on Tuesday at Anfield.
PSG rode a first-half goal by Ousmane Dembélé to win the second leg away following last week’s 1-0 Liverpool win in the French capital.
Elsewhere on the continent, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich also advanced on Tuesday to the quarterfinals of the 2024-25 UEFA Champions League. The last eight, which will be rounded out following four more round of 16 second leg contests on Wednesday, kicks off next month.
Here are three quick thoughts on Tuesday’s games:
Liverpool’s defeat was no fluke
Slot’s lot has nobody to blame but themselves after squandering its hard-fought first leg advantage by failing to a least secure a tie in the decisive encounter. It’s not like the hosts didn’t have chances.
Liverpool fired 19 shots towards PSG keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma but couldn’t beat the rangy Italian or the woodwork with any of them. In fact, the Reds forced Donnarumma into just three saves over 120 minutes on Merseyside.
Meantime, the visitors played like a team on a mission. They finished the match leading in every statistical category. Had they been a bit more clinical themselves — and had Reds backstop Alisson Becker not made a slew of top-drawer stops to keep his team in it — Liverpool would have been knocked out long before 19-year-old Désiré Doué converted the final spot-kick in the tiebreaker.
It’s a crushing blow for Liverpool and there’s no two ways about it, even if the historic club’s second English title since 1990 is now a forgone conclusion thanks to a 15-point lead atop the Prem.
As for PSG, the result is nothing short of a triumph — especially in a season before which exceptions were as low as they’d been in years following the drawn-out 2024 departure of hometown superstar Kylian Mbappé.
What a story it would be if PSG, sans Mbappé, can now ride that momentum all the way to its first European crown in Munich on May 31.
All-world Lamine Yamal leads Barça past Benfica
Having earned a hugely impressive, potentially season-defining 1-0 win in last week’s first leg in Portugal despite playing most of that match with 10 men, Barcelona came into Tuesday’s decider hell-bent on finishing the job. They also arrived fresh and full of purpose following an emotional weekend that saw their La Liga contest against Osasuna postponed following the sudden death of the club’s doctor, Carles Miñarro.
It was Barça’s youngest player who led the way. Yamal, Spain’s 17-year-old sensation, used an ankle-buckling cutback to set up the hosts’ opener for red-hot Raphinha just 10 minutes in.
Yamal then canceled out the equalizer scored by Benfica’s Argentine World Cup-winning defender Nicolas Otamendi with a breathtaking solo goal before the first half was finished.
Raphinha made it 4-1 on aggregate before the teams headed to their respective dressing rooms at the break, but there was no question who was the star of the show.
It was natural to wonder what Yamal, who won’t turn 18 until July, would do for an encore after helping his country win the Euros last year. The answer is now clear, as the brace-faced youngster continues to firmly establish himself as one of the planet’s consistently elite players.
Businesslike Bayern; Inter ends Feyenoord’s run
There was no need for Bayern Munich to take any chances back in Munich on Tuesday against Bundesliga rival (and current titleholder) Bayer Leverkusen, not after winning 3-0 in enemy territory last week.
Indeed, Vincent Kompany’s team was content to sit back for the first half of the return leg in Munich, with no goals for either side over the opening 45 minutes. With the outcome beyond doubt at that point, the gloves came off. Bayern padded their already lopsided advantage through second-half strikes by Harry Kane and Alphonso Davies for a 5-0 aggregate shellacking.
In Italy, Inter Milan went 3-0 up on total goals over Feyenoord before the Dutch darlings pulled one back. The visitors’ Cinderella run still seemed destined to end at the San Siro, though, and Hakan Çalhanoğlu promptly ensured that it did by restoring the 2023 silver medalists’ three-goal overall lead early in the second half.
Bayern and Inter will now meet in the quarters next month.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer writer for FOX Sports who has covered the United States men’s and women’s national teams at FIFA World Cups on five continents. Follow him at @ByDougMcIntyre.
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