Liverpool Vs Inter Milan - minute by minute - Champions League

Posted by bumeral

February 20, 2008

Liverpool FC reached the final last season and face a tough assignment if they are to repeat that feat as FC Internazionale Milano visit Anfield. The English side won their last three games in Group A to finish in second spot after taking just a point from their opening three contests, a stark contrast to the Italian champions who surged into the last 16 atop Group G after recording five straight wins following a loss on Matchday 1 - their last defeat in all competitions.
The match is under way.
1 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) handles the ball.
2 Materazzi (Internazionale) commits a foul after challenging Torres (Liverpool).
3 Gerrard (Liverpool) takes the corner.
3 Carragher (Liverpool) has a shot blocked.
4 Chivu (Internazionale) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Gerrard (Liverpool).
4 Chivu (Internazionale) is cautioned by the referee.
5 Fábio Aurélio (Liverpool) delivers the free-kick wide. action
6 Cruz (Internazionale) is flagged for offside.
7 Hyypiä (Liverpool) fouls.
8 Chivu (Internazionale) commits a foul after challenging Kuyt (Liverpool).
9 Gerrard (Liverpool) delivers the corner.
9 Hyypiä (Liverpool) has an effort on goal. action
9 Júlio César (Internazionale) makes a save.
10 Gerrard (Liverpool) takes the corner.
10 Stankovi? (Internazionale) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Gerrard (Liverpool).
11 Torres (Liverpool) is adjudged to be in an offside position.
12 Materazzi (Internazionale) fouls.
12 Materazzi (Internazionale) is shown a yellow card.
13 Mascherano (Liverpool) has a shot blocked.
16 Mascherano (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Cruz (Internazionale).
19 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) is flagged for offside.
21 Carragher (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Cruz (Internazionale).
22 Mascherano (Liverpool) fouls.
25 Gerrard (Liverpool) misses the target. action
27 Córdoba (Internazionale) commits a foul after challenging Torres (Liverpool).
27 Carragher (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Maicon (Internazionale).
28 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) fouls.
29 Mascherano (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale).
30 Materazzi (Internazionale) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Torres (Liverpool).
30 Materazzi (Internazionale) is booked.
30 Materazzi (Internazionale) is dismissed.
Inter must now play the remaining 60 minutes a man down.
31 Lucas Leiva (Liverpool) handles the ball.
32 Córdoba (Internazionale) fouls.
32 Torres (Liverpool) misses the target. action
34 Lucas Leiva (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale).
37 Torres (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Zanetti (Internazionale).
40 Babel (Liverpool) misses the target. action
43 Torres (Liverpool) fouls.
44 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) commits a foul after challenging Hyypiä (Liverpool).
45 Kuyt (Liverpool) has an effort on goal. action
45 Júlio César (Internazionale) makes a save.
45+1 Lucas Leiva (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Cruz (Internazionale).
The referee blows for half-time.
The second half begins.
47 Babel (Liverpool) fouls.
48 Torres (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Maicon (Internazionale).
48 Cambiasso (Internazionale) misses the target. action
49 Gerrard (Liverpool) has a shot blocked.
49 Mascherano (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Cruz (Internazionale).
50 Gerrard (Liverpool) delivers the corner.
51 Gerrard (Liverpool) has a shot blocked.
52 Hyypiä (Liverpool) misses the target. action
54 Fábio Aurélio (Liverpool) takes the corner.
55 Cruz (Internazionale) misses the target. action
55 Vieira (in) - Cruz (out) (Internazionale)
56 Stankovi? (Internazionale) fouls.
58 Torres (Liverpool) has an effort on goal. action
58 Júlio César (Internazionale) makes a save.
58 Gerrard (Liverpool) delivers the corner.
59 Gerrard (Liverpool) takes the corner.
59 Hyypiä (Liverpool) misses the target. action
60 Stankovi? (Internazionale) commits a foul after challenging Fábio Aurélio (Liverpool).
61 Gerrard (Liverpool) delivers the corner.
62 Gerrard (Liverpool) misses the target. action
63 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) handles the ball.
64 Torres (Liverpool) misses the target. action
64 Crouch (in) - Lucas Leiva (out) (Liverpool)
67 Vieira (Internazionale) handles the ball.
69 Chivu (Internazionale) takes the corner.
69 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) is adjudged to be in an offside position.
70 Crouch (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Córdoba (Internazionale).
72 Pennant (in) - Babel (out) (Liverpool)
72 Vieira (Internazionale) misses the target. action
74 Crouch (Liverpool) misses the target. action
76 Burdisso (in) - Córdoba (out) (Internazionale)
77 Gerrard (Liverpool) misses the target. action
77 Fábio Aurélio (Liverpool) delivers the corner.
78 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) fouls.
78 Crouch (Liverpool) has a shot blocked.
78 Finnan (Liverpool) misses the target. action
82 Pennant (Liverpool) takes the corner.
83 Ibrahimovi? (Internazionale) handles the ball.
83 Júlio César (Internazionale) makes a save.
84 Torres (Liverpool) has an effort on goal. action
85 (1 - 0) Kuyt (Liverpool) scores!
The deadlock has finally broken five minutes from time. Jermaine Pennant’s cross from the right evades a number of players and finds its way through to Dirk Kuyt at the far-post, who fires past Júlio César with the aid of a deflection. action
86 Torres (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Chivu (Internazionale).
87 Crouch (Liverpool) has an effort on goal. action
87 Júlio César (Internazionale) makes a save.
90 (2 - 0) Gerrard (Liverpool) scores!
After taking 85 minutes to get their first, Liverpool have a second within five minutes. Steven Gerrard collects Jermaine Pennant’s short pass and takes a touch before sending in a low shot which skids its way into the bottom corner. action
90+1 Pennant (Liverpool) gives away a free-kick following a challenge on Cambiasso (Internazionale).
90+2 Vieira (Internazionale) fouls.
90+2 Mascherano (Liverpool) commits a foul after challenging Vieira (Internazionale).
The final whistle is blown.

Those who believe that a world league of clubs will never be sanctioned should be told that we have one already.

It is called the Champions League, it is run by UEFA, the European soccer body that opposes English clubs playing league games overseas, and on Tuesday night its center of gravity was Anfield Stadium, Liverpool.

After just 30 minutes, the visiting team, Inter Milan, was reduced to 10 men and became an Italian team attempting to do the Italian job - defending for all it is worth - without a single Italian on the pitch.

Harshly, most neutrals would agree, Marco Materazzi was sent off for two fouls exaggerated by his opponent, Liverpool’s Spanish forward Fernando Torres. It took the height out of Inter’s defense, it took the most imposing defender in European soccer out of the contest, and it played into the hands of Rafael Benítez, the somewhat beleaguered Liverpool coach.

Benítez is in his element with his back against the wall, and his team selection and tactics being questioned from Madrid to Texas to Singapore.

Only last Saturday, he was the fall guy who chose an under-strength team that folded and lost at Anfield to Barnsley, a much lower division side, in the English FA Cup.

Rafa has been in England almost four years, and still he doesn’t get the English. His policy of rotating players, leaving out key men to keep them fresh for new battles, perplexes everyone - and either because he underestimates English opposition or he puts too much confidence in his chosen players, his team cannot win any domestic silverware this season.

But it still can be a force in Europe, again.

Since Benítez quit Valencia, which he also took to European Cup finals, the contradiction in his work has baffled those who pay him, and who play for him. Twice in three years he took Liverpool to Champions League finals, beating AC Milan in Istanbul in 2005 and losing to the same opponent in Athens in 2007.

Between those peaks, Liverpool acquired new owners, the American pair George Gillett and Tom Hicks and they are absentee landlords except for the big finals.

They might, indeed, be planning to offload the club to buyers from Dubai just as soon as the price is right and before the package of debts they recently re-negotiated becomes too burdensome. Meanwhile one of the owners, Hicks, admitted to sounding out Jürgen Klinsmann for Benítez’s job.

So maybe the distance of the Atlantic between owners and team management suits Benítez right now. Maybe the fact that old-time Liverpool players, like the Zimbabwean goalie Bruce Grobbelaar currently doing television work in Singapore, cannot abide the manager’s team selections is also water off the duck’s back so far as Rafa is concerned.

Grobbelaar was an acrobatic goalie whose timing was not always reliable. He chose this week to broadcast that it was time Liverpool, “his” club, got rid of Benítez and looked for a coach who would bed down a consistent team in which the players all knew the tactics.

So when Liverpool finally broke down Inter’s resistance on Tuesday, when it became the first team to defeat the Italian champion for 30 matches covering five months, Benítez was asked if he felt vindicated, and if this stabilized his immediate future at the club?

“We needed to win as a team,” he said. “As a manager, I am happy because we knew it was important not to concede, to stay patient and pass the ball well. It will still be difficult, because Inter is a good team, but it will be difficult for them now.”

Difficult, but not impossible. Liverpool won the first leg 2-0, with a deflected shot from Dirk Kuyt five minutes from the end, and a long, speculative drive from Steven Gerrard as the final whistle was imminent.

Those goals, born as the coach said of patience and belief that the goals would come, ended a solid hour of organized frustration on the part of Inter.

The dismissal of Materazzi was in itself a drama on a freezing night on which the breath of men rose like steam off the back of buffalos.

The analogy suits Materazzi.

He is the colossal Italian who was butted in the 2006 World Cup final by Zinédine Zidane. Now, Materazzi’s notoriety goes before him. He played one season, nine years ago, for Everton, the neighboring club to Liverpool, and was sent off three times.

He has played many a match in which his style, or lack of it, deserved red cards and didn’t get them. Tuesday, therefore, was a kind of perverse pay back.
The Spaniards did him. Benítez and his most expensive recruit from Madrid, Torres, were both quick to call for yellow cards on the two occasions the big Italian and the quick Spaniard came within arms length.

First, after 12 minutes, Torres outpaced Materazzi like a hare sprinting past a lumberjack. Materazzi used an arm to block the Liverpool player’s run, Frank de Bleeckere, the Belgian referee, used a hand to hoist the first yellow card.

On 29 minutes, Torres again rushed Materazzi, this time his shirt was tugged. Down went Torres to the turf, turning as he fell to gesticulate to the referee for another card. De Bleeckere, a public relations manager, publicly gave the home side what they asked for.

The match was disfigured as a spectacle, but still compelling.

Liverpool poured men forwards, Inter let them run up to the penalty box, but no further. It was stubborn, brave and absolutely committed old-style Italian defending, without an Italian left in sight.

At one stage, Liverpool had had 75 per cent of the ball possession, without creating a chance. Its leader, Gerrard, kept urging the onslaughts. Finally something broke. It was in the knee joint of Iván Córdoba, arguably the most effective defender in blue and black stripes - and when Córdoba was carried off on a stretcher the core of Inter’s defense was weakened.

The two late goals gave Liverpool what its efforts deserved, particularly as de Bleeckere had carried on his unconvincing display by ignoring, as did his linesman, the most blatant penalty appeal for handball against Inter’s substitute Patrick Vieira.

Ultimately, with Gerrard’s 50th European goal and his team’s 100th European victory at Anfield, the home crowd were singing into the night. They can see another domestic season of failure turning into a journey into the heart of Europe.

“I wasn’t surprised they gave a good performance,” said Inter’s coach Roberto Mancini. “The Champions League is very important to them, its all they have left to play for.”

Mancini thought that the referee got both decisions wrong against Materazzi, and stated defiantly: “Coming back from two goals down has been done plenty of times, and is not beyond us.”

Historians remember that the last time Inter won the European Cup, in 1965, it lost the semi-final first leg 3-1 before winning 3-0 in Milan. The opponent? Liverpool.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Roma came from a goal down at the Olympic Stadium in Rome to beat Real Madrid 2-1, Schalke squeezed out Porto by the only goal, and Chelsea froze out Olympiakos 0-0 in strangely wintry Athens.

Share and Enjoy: