14-time champions of Europe, Real Madrid came from two goals down to dominate Liverpool 5-2 in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 clash at Anfield, Tuesday night.
Liverpool forward, Darwin Nunez opened the scoring in the fourth minute before Mohamed Salah pounced on Thibaut Courtois erroneous clearance to double the hosts’ lead ten minutes after.
However, Real Madrid fought back as Vinicius Junior scored twice to level the score before the break, the second coming from another failed clearance, this time it was by Liverpool’s shot stopper – Alisson.
The galaticos took the lead for the first time less than three minutes into the second half, with Eder Militao heading home a Luka Modric free kick from the left.
Real Madrid skipper, Karim Benzema, added two more goals as the visitors ran away with the match, giving Liverpool a mountain to climb in the second leg in Spain on March 15.
Anceloti reacts to victory, says – ‘this tie isn’t finished’
“Winning like this isn’t easy, above all because of how the match began. We never lost confidence and little by little we won control of the ball, Carlo Ancelotti spoke to the media after Madrid’s victory.
He said, “We were efficient up front and Vinicius Junior produced an incredible performance.
“This is only the first part of a knockout tie. It’s gone our way, but we’ll need to imagine that in the second leg we’ll have to suffer and work hard.
“Obviously we didn’t expect to start like we did but at 2-0 down I thought about the City away leg last year in the hope that we could do the same – but it turned out even better.
“They were doing us damage down our left but when we were better in our attacks, we moved Valverde a little bit towards that danger and we then defended better.
“Liverpool is a great team which made us suffer in the first half so I’d say that, unfortunately, this tie isn’t finished. No way. I want to praise Rodrygo because he did incredible work up and down the pitch producing just what I’d asked of him.”
