Post Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Salzburg at Red Bull Arena on Tuesday night, Reds defender Virgil van Dijk jokingly said that Mohamed Salah could have made the match easier for the visitors.
Notably, Salah missed many opportunities to score during Liverpool’s outing to Salzburg, where they emerged victorious and confirmed themselves a knockout berth in the ongoing Champions League.
“He could have made it a little bit easier for us tonight! I told him that as well, that he tried to make it a little bit more excited for the crowd maybe,” joked Van Dijk as quoted by Liverpool’s official website.
However, in the match, the Egyptian striker soon paid off with a stunning goal to lock things in favour of the visiting team.
In the 58th minute of the game, Salah latched onto a Jordan Henderson pass, took the ball wide of advancing goalkeeper Cican Stankovic and found the net from a seemingly impossible angle.
“He missed a chance in the first half, a big one, but you see his goal in the second half and that’s the quality he has got, like the rest of the players,” said Van Dijk.
With the win, the Reds move to round of 16 and keep their hopes of defending their title alive.
On Tuesday, Klopp’s men played some nervy 20 minutes at the beginning, however, they finally gained composure, but were lucky enough not to have conceded a goal in that spell. Alisson, whose late save denied Napoli a draw in their previous game, was the man on duty to stop everything coming his way.
Naby Keita drew the first blood in the 57th minute on a play engineered by Trent Alexander-Arnold, while talisman Mohamed Salah doubled the lead seconds later and killed the game.