Arne Slot hailed Alisson as the best goalkeeper in the world after the Liverpool No 1 produced a magnificent one-man show to thwart Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.
Alisson described his display as arguably the finest of his career having made nine saves against Luis Enrique’s dominant team and played a part in Harvey Elliott’s late winner. The Liverpool head coach conceded his team would have been lucky to escape with a draw from Parc des Princes, such was PSG’s superiority, but had no doubt who was responsible for an unlikely victory.
“I have had some very good players as a manager but never the best goalkeeper in the world until now,” said Slot. “He showed that he is the best in the world today. To go away with a win here was probably a bit more than we deserved.”
Peter Schmeichel, who was on commentary duty in Paris, said: “I think this is one of the best goalkeeping displays I’ve ever seen in my life.” For his part, Alisson admitted: “It was probably the performance of my life. The manager was telling us how hard it would be to play against PSG, how good they are with the ball and that we would have to be ready to suffer. We knew what was coming.”
“We worked hard. We gave away so many chances, sometimes one v one but all the efforts the team put in makes my job easier. Then at the end Harvey coming in and scoring the goal, it is a great story for us. A great night.”
Luis Enrique called the result “unfair” and claimed PSG could go through with a repeat performance at Anfield next week. “It will be difficult in that atmosphere but we have nothing to lose and that makes us dangerous,” said the PSG and former Barcelona coach.
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Slot added: “We are the lucky one tonight, that’s clear for everyone. They were the much better team, especially in the first half when they had a lot of open chances. In the second half they were still the better team, still had a lot of shots on target, but mainly from outside the box. I saw how much quality this team has and these individual players have. So all these shots from outside the box, with a certain speed, that you only see with the top players. That’s why Alisson still had to make a lot of big saves. We were lucky with the first half, that the goal [Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s shot] was fractionally offside.”
