It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Liverpool was supposed to stride confidently into St. Jakob-Park for its UEFA Champions League game against Basel, defeat the Swiss champions and return to Anfield with three points and one foot in the Round of 16.
After all, Liverpool played well in Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Everton, and manager Brendan Rodgers had this to say said this before kickoff Wednesday.
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Liverpool’s revival sputtered early and ground to a halt before the 15-minute mark. Raheem Sterling appeared to score the opening goal in the third minute but he was offside, and the goal was disallowed. Basel seized the initiative within ten minutes and held onto it for the next 40 with little resistance from Liverpool.
Marco Streller’s 52nd-minute goal ended a passage of play in which Basel was the better team by some distance. The Swiss side comfortably controlled the game’s tempo, enjoyed advantages in territory and possession and created the more dangerous scoring chances. Everyone would have understood if Rodgers was fuming and laid into his team at halftime. Unfortunately, Liverpool’s response came 10 minutes into the second period — after Streller already had scored.
Lazar Markovic had two good chances to score immediately after Streller, but Tomas Vaclick denied them both. When the Basel goalkeeper wasn’t making saves, Liverpool was wasting the chances it did well to create. Sterling, in particular, was guilty of such charges in the second half of a performance that was disappointing on personal and collective levels.
But Liverpool’s comeback efforts petered out well before the final whistle, leaving the Reds to digest another troubling performance and this latest defeat. The most problematic trends of a difficult 2014-15 campaign returned to the forefront Wednesday. Liverpool conceded a goal from a set-piece and wasn’t ruthless when presented with chances of its own — failings that are all-too-familiar to observers of the club.
However, there was a new cause for concern. Basel didn’t sit back and let Liverpool dictate play, as many of the Reds’ Premier League opponents have done to great effect. Basel passed the ball confidently, pushed its defensive line high up the field and took the game to Liverpool. That should have played into Liverpool’s hands, as there was finally space in the opponents’ half for it to exploit.
But Liverpool’s pressing game largely was ineffective, and its counter-attacks, which were devastating in 2013-14, posed little menace to the hosts. The Reds were defensively disjointed at times, their attack lacked zest and invention and striker Mario Balotelli is struggling to show that he is on the same page with his attack-minded teammates.
Liverpool now must regroup and rediscover both the passing tempo and pressing hunger it showed against Everton in time for Saturday’s Premier League game against West Brom. The Reds then must carry it boldly into the immediate future because they can’t afford to drop points in their four, winnable league games in the next month. Then there’s that small matter of Real Madrid’s visit to Anfield on Oct. 22. Liverpool must win or risk falling into a morass of a race for the second place in Group B of the Champions League.
Review our live blog of Liverpool-Basel >>
Photo via Georgios Kefalas/AP Photo
