Liverpool 0-1 PSG (1-1 on aggregate, PSG win 4-1 on penalties)
by James Nalton
at Anfield

IF THE ideal ending to a European Cup season pits the continent’s two best teams against each other in the final, then there’s a strong argument to say the ideal ending would have been Liverpool versus Paris Saint-Germain.

Knockout cup competitions don’t work like that, though (neither should they) and despite its extended money-spinning Champions League League Stage, the European Cup is still ultimately a knockout tournament.

Sometimes it can even seem more fitting that such heavyweights meet early on where home and away legs make the challenge feel more complete than a one-off final, and the winner truly deserving — almost like football’s version of a test match. And with the 30 minutes of extra time at Anfield, they were really spoiling us.

Across two legs, plus that period of extra time, Liverpool and PSG put on a display of quality, entertaining football after which the winners deserved to progress despite the eventual fine margin of victory via a penalty shootout.

The two sides met at such an early stage due to the Parisians’ stumbles in the group stage.

It’s still early days for this new Champions League format, but you get the impression the team finishing top of the group stage, as Liverpool did, won’t often draw an opponent as strong as this PSG side so early in the knockout rounds.

The best teams don’t always win knockout tournaments, which is part of their charm, but as PSG coped with the pressure of Anfield just as they coped with Liverpool’s pressing, Luis Enrique’s outfit certainly look like the favourites.

A resurgent Barcelona might have something to say about that, and the draw throws up the clear possibility of the Catalan side meeting PSG in the final which, given the recent history between the two teams in European competition, would combine quality with plenty of narrative.

Liverpool bow out with the feeling that with any other draw they would surely have progressed further, but also knowing that in cup competitions you need to beat one of the other top teams at some point in the knockout stage, and they were unable to do so.

Such a meeting came too early from a Liverpool point of view, but it has still been a promising European season for Slot in his first year in charge at Anfield and plenty of lessons will have been learned for future campaigns.

The European Cup now awaits its ideal PSG versus Barcelona final, but this being knockout competition — unpredictable even at this level of financial power, as PSG know all too well — there are no guarantees it will get it.