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The Reds’ dream of claiming a Champions League-Premier League double title this year is dead after Paris Saint-Germain stunned the former’s top seed in a penalty shootout on Tuesday at Anfield.
PSG rode a first-half goal by Ousmane Dembélé to win the second leg away following last week’s 1-0 Liverpool win in the French capital.
Elsewhere on the continent, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich also advanced on Tuesday to the quarterfinals of the 2024-25 UEFA Champions League. The last eight, which will be rounded out following four more round of 16 second leg contests on Wednesday, kicks off next month.
Here are three quick thoughts on Tuesday’s games:
Slot’s lot has nobody to blame but themselves after squandering its hard-fought first leg advantage by failing to a least secure a tie in the decisive encounter. It’s not like the hosts didn’t have chances.
Liverpool fired 19 shots towards PSG keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma but couldn’t beat the rangy Italian or the woodwork with any of them. In fact, the Reds forced Donnarumma into just three saves over 120 minutes on Merseyside.
Meantime, the visitors played like a team on a mission. They finished the match leading in every statistical category. Had they been a bit more clinical themselves — and had Reds backstop Alisson Becker not made a slew of top-drawer stops to keep his team in it — Liverpool would have been knocked out long before 19-year-old Désiré Doué converted the final spot-kick in the tiebreaker.
It’s a crushing blow for Liverpool and there’s no two ways about it, even if the historic club’s second English title since 1990 is now a forgone conclusion thanks to a 15-point lead atop the Prem.
As for PSG, the result is nothing short of a triumph — especially in a season before which exceptions were as low as they’d been in years following the drawn-out 2024 departure of hometown superstar Kylian Mbappé.
What a story …
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