Three chances, none taken
Fifteenth minute, 40th, 49th. Bradley Barcola got three clear looks at goal on his big Anfield night against Atletico Madrid and put none of them away. Liverpool won 2-1 anyway. The Frenchman walked off with his reputation still unsettled.
He played on the right, with Florian Wirtz through the middle, young Ngumoha on the left and Alexander Isak leading the line. For the hour he lasted, he was Liverpool’s most dangerous player. The last of those three chances came off a lightning break and skidded inches past Oblak’s post.
Cramp ended his night. “We’re pushing him a bit too quickly. We wanted him out there, but in the end we decided to tell him to give us everything he could,” Andoni Iraola said afterwards.
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140 million euros buys you no grace period
The price tag frames everything. Barcola was the biggest signing of the English summer, 140 million euros from PSG. At that number, patience evaporates, and a wasteful evening drags every old question from his Paris years back into the room.
Sky Sports got the night into one line: “His fitness looked better than his finishing.” The broadcaster also picked up on the Kop singing his name inside 15 minutes, after a recovery run snuffed out an Atletico counter.
The Nunez comparison nobody asked for
The Liverpool Echo gave him a 6 out of 10 and went out of its way to kill off the comparison already circulating in the stands. Darwin Nunez, mocked for years at Anfield over his finishing, is a different player entirely, the paper argued.
The English press is willing to wait. Not forever. His pace is already rated as a genuine weapon for Iraola. The rest comes down to end product, on a stage where a nine-figure fee is never quiet for long.
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