And then, all of a sudden, the reverie evaporated and reality descended. Vinícius Júnior scored one goal, wonderfully, and then had a second presented to him by Alisson. It had the effect of breaking the spell. The clock struck midnight. Éder Militão made it three. Benzema had a shot deflected in for four, and then danced through, his shoes soft and his touch sure, to make it five.
Liverpool, suddenly, looked to be what it has been for much of the season: a mid-table Premier League team caught in the throes of an awkward, jarring transition. The difference, this time, was that it was being forced to play the European champion.
Quite how Liverpool’s collapse has happened remains, even now, something of a mystery. Countless thousands of words have been dedicated in recent months in an attempt to understand how a team that was so painstakingly constructed, put together with such thought and expertise and precision, could come apart at the seams so quickly and so easily. How something so good could prove so ultimately fragile.
There are concrete factors that certainly seem to have contributed. Injuries have not helped, of course, compounding a failure to upgrade the midfield. The effects of last season, in which Liverpool became the first English team to play every game in every competition for which it was eligible — winning two trophies, but neither of the prizes it most wanted — have lingered, both physically and psychologically.
But then there are the intangible, the theoretical and the emotional strands, the charges that can only ever take the form of questions: Has Liverpool been too loyal to the core of Klopp’s team? Has upheaval behind the scenes, the departure of several key members of the staff, disrupted the harmony the club had worked so hard to foster? If so, has that had any impact on performances?
