Napoli vs Liverpool: European champions fall short of their billing as the enthralling capriciousness of football costs Liverpool

The enthralling capriciousness of football. On one side, there was Jurgen Klopp’s interpretation: “When the player jumps before there is contact it cannot be a penalty.”

On the other side, there was Carlo Ancelotti’s: “It was fairly clear the penalty from where I was in the dugout.”

There’s then the reality of what actually happened either side of Jose Callejon’s controversial fall.

Liverpool were actually enjoying their best spell of the game, as it seemed as if Ancelotti’s subs had ceded all of Napoli’s initiative. They’d lost their verve, and looked on the verge of losing the game.

It was instead when they won it.

“Just when it seemed that all was lost and Liverpool had taken complete control of the game, the two goals came from curious and unusual circumstances,” Ancelotti said.

Liverpool had opened up and suddenly got caught on the break, with Callejon then catching out a somewhat rash Andy Robertson.

That is one thing that’s beyond debate. Callejon played the situation. Another description would be that he outright dived, and cheated.

Whether it was thereafter a penalty is a more difficult debate.

That the referee actually saw it that way and gave it was just unfortunate, since it could have gone the other way. VAR can never remove that ambiguity. Some decisions will forever remain unchangingly subjective.

In that sense, it was just just rank bad luck that the penalty was given.

That was what decided this opening Champions League match, even if the dive itself was genuinely an extension of Napoli’s overall sharpness.

It’s far from the first time they’ve caused Liverpool problems. That’s been the case in all of their three meetings Champions League so far in the Klopp era. There is a suggestion that Ancelotti’s specific tactics might just be suited to unsettling Liverpool’s, which is why they’ve won two of those meetings.

Even Liverpool’s sole win ultimately came down to the flip side of that luck, and the same capriciousness to the game.

Virgil van Dijk maybe should have been sent off in that game last season, and it was still dependent on a miracle save from Allison.

If either of those go a different way, so does Liverpool’s entire season. So, maybe does the entire path of this team.

Allison’s save might have been irrelevant, forgotten in the way that Adrian’s here largely will because it no longer meant the same thing.

But they didn’t go a different way. They were borderline incidents, and it was that very knife-edge nature of them that actually helped Liverpool get a fuller sense of themselves as a team in the long term. They helped them become European champions, and not just in terms of actually getting through.

That was one of the more interesting elements of this defeat, even if it won’t really have any influence on the season.

Liverpool should still breeze through the group, and will of course be favourites to win the trophy again, but this was not really a display that suggested why. It felt more like one from the side when it was much earlier in development.

You could see the general shape was there, and the core idea, with Fabinho particularly executing it perfectly – but he was one of the few. Liverpool were just lacking a sharpness, and felt off in so many moments when it came right down to it. Be that finishing, attacking moves and occasional defensive play.

How else to explain Robertson’s clumsiness, or Virgil van Dijk’s rare error.

In short, they were quite short of the standards they set for themselves.

It was not the performance of European champions.

This of course isn’t any cause for concern. It’s just one of those games, decided by one of those moments.

But it did emphasise that we maybe have got a little too used to them being utterly brilliant. That’s how good they’ve been.

This reminded us that their mortal, and the very capriciousness of the game can be the killer.

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