Champions League

Champions League Team of the Week - Lucas Moura, Divock Origi, Georginio Wijnaldum

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 09 May 2019

Sports Mole selects its Champions League team of the week from an unforgettable pair of semi-final second legs for Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

The second legs of the 2018-19 Champions League semi-finals will go down in history as arguably the most dramatic stage ever seen in the competition.

Both Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur produced unforgettable comebacks to set up an all-English final in Madrid on June 1, with Barcelona and Ajax failing to turn first-leg leads into aggregate victories.

Liverpool had a particularly big mountain to climb ahead of the second leg as they faced a 3-0 deficit without two of their star players, but they beat the Spanish giants 4-0 on the night amid a rousing atmosphere at Anfield.

Tottenham's chances of joining their domestic rivals in the final looked bleak when they fell two down on the night and three down on aggregate in Amsterdam, only for three unanswered second-half goals to take them into the Madrid showpiece for the very first time.

Here, Sports Mole selects its Champions League team of the week from an incredible pair of matches.

While the task of overturning the goals deficit at Anfield was difficult enough, Liverpool also knew that conceding a goal would kill off their chances once and for all. Alisson Becker ensured that was not the case, though, making good saves to deny Philippe Coutinho, Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Lionel Messi, and giving the hosts the foundation from which to launch their comeback.

Indeed, as the only team to keep a clean sheet it is easy to select the full Liverpool defence with the exception of Andrew Robertson, who was forced off at half time. Danny Rose gets the nod at left-back as a result, having played his part in a fine second-half display - although he did have problems with Hakim Ziyech at times.

Virgil van Dijk was once again imperious at the heart of the Liverpool defence to keep pantomime villain Suarez and even Messi as quiet as could be expected, and Joel Matip also deserves to be included in that praise - particularly his crucial challenge on Messi inside the area.

One of the standout moments from the win was Trent Alexander-Arnold's genius piece of quick-thinking for the fourth goal, with the 20-year-old showing maturity far beyond his years with a corner which caught the entire Barcelona defence sleeping.

It is Georginio Wijnaldum who will go down as one of the two main heroes from that memorable night, though, coming off the bench in place of Robertson at half time and going on to score twice in the space of as many minutes to send Anfield into a frenzy.

Fabinho's performance will not garner quite as many headlines, but his disruptive presence in the middle of the park was integral to preventing Barcelona from gaining control of the game at any stage, allowing Liverpool to set a tempo their visitors could not cope with.

Sadio Mane and Xherdan Shaqiri deserve mentions for the parts they played - as do the likes of Ziyech, Matthijs de Ligt and Dusan Tadic for Ajax - but Spurs provide all of the trio behind the striker. The easiest decision of the lot was Lucas Moura, of course, with the Brazilian making himself the hero in Amsterdam with a brilliant second-half hat-trick, almost single-handedly dragging his side into the final.

Dele Alli's role in two of those goals cannot be overstated either, and the England international's cute pass for the last-gasp winner was particularly impressive at such an important stage of the game.

The returning Son Heung-min may not have got on the scoresheet himself, but he set the tempo for Spurs going forward and was a constant threat. The Korean hit the woodwork and had a few other sights of goal, helping Spurs to really take the game to Ajax.

Divock Origi was the unlikely hero for Liverpool as he once again produced at a crucial moment for the club, setting up the comeback with his early goal and then completing it with some quick-thinking alongside Alexander-Arnold. There was huge pressure on him in the absence of Firmino and Salah, and the Belgian really stepped up to the plate.