PORTO, Portugal -- If the apocalypse comes and all life is wiped out, Liverpool will be right there next to the cockroaches. They're the side that won't go away. The side that in the space of a year has turned from a reckless teenager into a furrowed-brow 30-something, from a side just as liable to blow teams away as explode, into one that wins by any means necessary, grinding out results where you didn't think them possible.
- Mane 9/10, Fabinho 8/10 as Liverpool ease into semifinals
A 4-1 win at Porto might sound like the sort of freewheeling performance they specialised in a season ago, but it was nothing of the sort, especially in the first half. Porto were aggressive and relentless in the first 30 minutes, knowing the best chance to overturn the 2-0 deficit from the first leg was to get one back early.
But Liverpool countered that by playing ugly. They took their sweet time with free kicks, goal kicks and throw-ins, causing significant consternation from the home crowd: Porto fans are, it turns out, extremely loud whistlers.
They scrapped and dug in, and even though their passing was askew and they barely created a chance, they were in the game. It didn't seem to matter that they spent much of the opening 45 minutes in their own half: everything they've done this season convinced you they would be alright in the end.
Before the game, James Milner mentioned this quality as the most impressive feature of 2019's iteration of Liverpool, the ability to regroup and be decisive after "the tricky 15 minutes when you're not on your game." It was a tricky 26 or so minutes in this case, until Sadio Mane scored their opener, the away goal that effectively killed the tie stone dead. From there, even if the quality of Liverpool's play didn't improve massively until the last quarter when Porto more or less gave up, they were comfortable.
"We had to defend a lot in the first half an hour," said Jurgen Klopp afterwards, "That's OK, that's no problem. The big difference from the past is we can do it, it's no problem. That's what you have to do. If we have to do it, we do it." It almost sounded as if Klopp, and by extension his team, enjoyed digging in and having to defend. How times have changed!
This was the crucial part of the game. "They needed an early goal tonight but didn't score it," said Klopp, "and then their intensity level drops a little bit and we are still there. To be back in the semis is a big statement. We did it in different ways which makes it even more special."
In the second half they showed the other side of their maturity, controlling the game, keeping Porto at bay with the jab and picking them off with three more goals. The highlight of those Mohamed Salah's composed finish after a through ball from Trent Alexander-Arnold that even Kevin De Bruyne would have been jealous of.
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