It was perhaps one of the worst defensive displays ever given by a professional footballer and reminded us of why Jurgen Klopp when he first came to Liverpool refused to play Alexander Arnold in the big games and preferred instead to start with Joe Gomez or James Milner.
Alexander Arnold was at fault for all three Madrid goals – particularly the second – where, inexplicably, he headed the ball into the path of Asensio to score – and the third, when he failed to track the movement of Vinicius Junior in the box allowing the Brazilian to latch onto a pass from Luka Modric and squeeze the ball passed Allison Becker, who should have done better to keep it out.
Usually, Alexander Arnold’s defensive ineptitude is forgiven by his dangerous attacking play, but against Real Madrid so horrible was his defensive display that it seemed to affect all aspects of his game and even his mentality suffered, which descended into petulance.
Ultimately, Klopp will have to make a decision about what to do about the right-back position. He cannot continue to play Alexander Arnold there. He is costing Liverpool goal after goal, game after game. Southgate is not an idiot.
But before Klopp makes a decision about Alexander Arnold, he will need to justify why he persists with Naby Keita and, in particular, why he picked him tonight over Thiago Alcantara.
Keita has had an undistinguished Liverpool career, admittedly blighted by frequent injury, and has at no point suggested he is capable of making the difference at the highest level.
Thiago, on the other hand, while having an indifferent start in a Reds shirt, with Fabinho returning to anchor the midfield, has begun to look like the classy player who can control a game Liverpool bought him for. The fact that Klopp hastily took off Keita on 41 minutes, when Madrid were threatening to add to the two goals they’d already scored, replacing him with Thiago, tells us that Klopp knew he had made a mistake.
Klopp is capable of making these catastrophic mistakes. We recall his insistence on playing Lorius Karius ahead of Simon Mignolet when it was obvious from the start that Karius was a calamitous keeper who was going to cost his team sooner or later; and we recall how Liverpool’s season had to implode before the manager realised that playing midfielders at centre back was destroying the team.
Liverpool’s best player on the night was Gini Wijnaldum and it seems another oversight on the Reds’ part not to have tied the Dutchman down to an extended contract and forcing him to look elsewhere to continue his career.
Real Madrid ended up winning 3-1 and the truth is they were so dominant that they will feel disappointed not to have put the tie to bed, allowing Liverpool a 10-minute period at the start of the second half in which they threatened and Mo Salah scored a scrappy goal that gives the Reds a glimmer of hope for next week’s return at Anfield, even if it's difficult to see how Liverpool can go so quickly from an awful performance to a magical one, especially without 50,000 fans there to make a difference.
