Dominant Liverpool stunned by Luisao
Last updated : 22 February 2006 By Daily Telegraph
The wit was backed up by events. With six minutes remaining of a contest that Liverpool controlled, Dietmar Hamann gave away a free-kick that Petit chipped in for Luisao to head past a dumbfounded Reina. Rafael Benitez slumped back on to his seat in the away dug-out, his face a picture of anger. Until then, Benfica had never threatened to smash, let alone grab.
When he returned to Merseyside this morning, the Liverpool manager would still have fancied his chances of overturning the result in the second leg at Anfield. However, Liverpool's first away defeat in the Champions League for 11 matches, including qualifiers, has put at risk their hold on what Steven Gerrard calls "the cup with the big ears".
By taking their chances, Benfica had repeated the performance that saw Manchester United bundled out of the Champions League in humiliating circumstances in December. However, it was the encounter at Old Trafford a few months before that Liverpool might like to study. Then, Ronald Koeman sent his side out to attack and was extremely unlucky to lose. The Eagles of Benfica might still have more English meat to prey on.
February is a month which sees Liverpool play eight matches and for a side whose season began in July there was enough of a strain on Benitez's resources for him to drop the men who had overcome Manchester United - Steven Gerrard, Hamann and Peter Crouch - to the bench.
Hamann, who probably should have been preferred to Mohamed Sissoko in any event, replaced the man from Mali 10 minutes before an eagerly anticipated interval in which Benfica watered one half of the pitch - the one they would be attacking. Beto had caught Sissoko in the head with his studs and the Liverpool midfielder was taken from the field on a stretcher.
The fact that Luis Garcia managed to get himself booked after 30 seconds with a wild if hardly vicious challenge on Leo, also hampered the Liverpool midfield.
Benitez started with Fowler, which would have delighted the Toxteth prodigal and given him an indication that at 30 his manager does not see him as a bit-part player. Fowler had last begun a game in the Champions League in Portugal five years ago in the altogether more intimate surroundings of Boavista. His last taste of the competition had been a bitter one, brought on as a substitute for Emile Heskey when Liverpool had already been shredded by Barcelona.
Frankly, Fowler seldom suggested he might break through, mainly because a partnership that links him with Fernando Morientes is critically short of speed. He had only found the net once in the European Cup, and that in a non-too-demanding qualifier against the Finnish side, Haka. There were one or two of the old Fowler touches, a back-flick that almost sowed panic in the home area and once, when colliding with Moretto, he forced the keeper to drop the ball, which Anderson hacked away. When he was replaced with 25 minutes remaining, Fowler could hardly have complained.
That Liverpool rested Crouch and Gerrard meant that Sven-Goran Eriksson who had travelled to Lisbon, where he still keeps a house from his days managing Benfica, had not much to watch aside from Jamie Carragher. Presumably, Fowler's description of Eriksson in his autobiography as a passionless, tactically indecisive leader would bar him from consideration for the World Cup, even more than his lack of true match fitness.
Reina did not have a single save to make in the first hour and until Petit tested him with a lob from extreme range in the 63rd minute Benfica seemed content to settle for set pieces. Only deep into first-half stoppage time when Simao sent a free-kick scuttling over Reina's bar did one threaten to cause any damage. Laurent Robert may have shown rather more resolve than he usually did in his later outings for Newcastle but his corners were generally easily dealt with.
The Liverpool supporters would have left Lisbon with few genuine memories of this contest aside from the traditional sight of Benfica's golden eagle mascot - a real one rather than a bloke dressed up in a suit that Crystal Palace use - swooping through the great stadium's floodlights. It is something they might like to try at Selhurst Park.
