THERE are a lot of full-time football experts earning good money for their opinions south of the border who are quite determined to tell us Scots that our Premiership is a pub league, an irrelevance.
Well, two graduates from this football abomination helped put one of England’s greatest names, Liverpool, into the semi-final of the Champions League at the expense of Manchester City; according to these same pundits, the best team in the Premier League era.
What a player Andy Robertson has become. A guy who a little over five years ago was a Celtic reject playing for amateur Queen’s Park. The Scotland international was superb over both legs, he’s had a brilliant season, and it was a pleasure to watch him excel on such a stage.
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So, too, Virgil van Dijk. His rise to stardom may have been more predictable; however, Celtic should take huge credit for scouting the Dutchman who in January, via Southampton, became the world’s most expensive defender.
But allow me to lavish praise on Robertson who could become the first Scot to play in a European Cup Final – Darren Fletcher never made it – since Paul Lambert won the famous trophy with Borussia Dortmund in 1997.
The Glaswegian has had some knocks along the way but it was his name, not Mo Salah or Roberto Firmino I heard being chanted in the streets around the Etihad Stadium before the match.
After a shaky start by all the Liverpool players, Robertson had a wonderful evening. Maybe our league isn’t so bad after all, eh.
City needed goals and threw everything at the men from up the road. But the defence, with Van Dijk chief organiser, and the lad who Celtic thought too small to make it, was superb to the Dutchman’s left.
City are class, make no mistake, and only a top-class footballer can stand up to so much pressure, keep calm enough to play passes when the natural instinct would be to get rid of the ball and win possession back from David Silva, Raheem Sterling, and the rest.
It was a great night, football at its best. An early City goal, that’s what everyone wanted, unless you were from Merseyside
City needed two minutes to get this show on the road and it’s a goal for which Van Dijk of all people was partly to blame. It was his only mistake.
He complained of a clip by Sterling instead of getting rid of the ball, a foul wasn’t given, which meant he had less time to find a man with a pass, which he failed to do. The ball was quickly recycled, Sterling got free of any red shirt and his low cross was tucked calmly away by Gabriel Jesus.
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City smelled blood. Bernardo Silva hit the post on 40 minutes and City were then denied a second, a shocking decision, when Leroy Sane had a goal disallowed. The linesman put his flag up because he thought, wrongly, that Sane was offside because Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius was well off his line meaning the City player had only had one man between him and the goal when he scored.
But the ball clearly hit a Liverpool player – James Milner – last, meaning it should have stood. Pep Guardiola wasn’t happy. Such was his anger that he had to sit in the stand for the second-half for what he said to the officials.
And 10 minutes after the break, with their manager absent from the touchline, City’s European dreams were ended. Sane could have won a penalty, he was clipped by Nicolas Otamendi inside the box, but it didn’t matter. Salah chipped the ball home as if he were playing down the park with his pals. City were gone and Firmino’s goal to win the game earned Liverpool another famous win.
Well done, Liverpool. And well done, Andy Robertson. You just get the feeling a Scot will get his hands on club football’s greatest prize next month.
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