Liverpool Football Club is a club whose history is built on those great European nights at Anfield. Many of those nights have seen stunning European comebacks where the Reds defy all odds to comeback and win, and Thursday night at Anfield was one of those night as Liverpool scored an added-time winner to beat Borussia Dortmund in a modern-day Anfield classic. A 4-3 win carried Liverpool through 5-4 on aggregate.
After a stirring YNWA sung by both sets of fans, the atmosphere inside Anfield quickly deflated when Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang both scored within the first ten minutes to put the visitors ahead and cancel out Liverpool’s away goal in Germany,
Divock Origi’s fourth goal in his last three games three minutes into the second half offered the Kop some hope but Marco Reus appeared to have extinguished that hope 9 minutes later when he score to put Dortmund up 3-1 on the night and leading 4-2 on aggregate.
But remarkably in the last 25 minutes Liverpool scored three times to claim a memorable victory and keep alive Liverpool fans dreams of another European Final and Champions League football next season.
The heroes for Liverpool were central defenders Mamadou Sakho, whose goal pulled Liverpool level on the night, and Dejan Lovren who scored the dramatic winner one minute into added time.
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp pointed to the introduction of Sturridge and Allen as the turning point in the match, saying afterwards:
“We fought back like devils and it is deserved,” he declared.
“Maybe we were little bit lucky as that is always the case when you score the winner after 90 minutes, but we deserve it for the chances we created.
“It is difficult to explain. A wonderful, wonderful night at Anfield and to be honest the game was strange.
“When we brought Daniel Sturridge and Joe Allen on we gave them the message, ‘we have to show character.’ I don’t care if we lose, we have to show them and we did even more. This is European football at its best. It’s hard to believe. Congratulations to all of the lads.
“At half-time it’s difficult to stay brave but we agreed that the we had to go the hard way. It is a game that all fans – even not of Liverpool or Dortmund – can say, OK, football is a nice game.”