The broadcast camera quickly caught the direction Leo Lin had pointed in before Messi took the penalty. It was the same direction Alisson had dived to save it.
Van Dijk had already cleared the ball. After a brief celebration with Alisson, Leo Lin immediately told everyone to keep marking their men and defend the coming corner.
"I told you Leo Lin was cheating on the pitch. Who can question me now?"
"No way, man. Being that good in midfield is already ridiculous, and now you can guess the direction of a penalty too?"
"Does anyone still remember when Leo Lin said he could play goalkeeper and even push Alisson out of the starting spot? I believe him now!"
Barcelona's following corner was also caught by Alisson, and Zubizarreta was delighted. As the defensive coach, he knew Alisson's consecutive saves would definitely give the team's defense even more confidence.
"Barcelona failed to take that chance. They couldn't even score the penalty."
"Now it's probably going to be very difficult for them to beat Liverpool. Liverpool's back line will have even more confidence."
Rakitic also realized that he had misjudged the situation, because Liverpool did have a midfield.
After play resumed, Liverpool continued attacking Barcelona with the 3-4-3, constantly shifting between central midfield and wide midfield.
Joe Gomez, surprisingly, was playing very well. Wijnaldum's pace might not be ideal out wide, but he had technique, the kind every professional player wanted.
As long as you had technique, you could adapt to any position, because you could always bring that technique into play wherever you were.
The 22nd minute of the match.
When Wijnaldum pulled out to the right wide midfielder position to receive the ball, he glanced toward the middle. Leo Lin was unmarked, but he did not look like he wanted the ball. That meant Wijnaldum still had a better option.
He looked to the left. Mané was watching him, but he had not made a run. Instead, there was no one near Joe Gomez.
A long pass was sent to the left wide midfielder. The moment Joe Gomez received the ball, Mané started his run.
But the pass to Mané did not come from Joe Gomez. It came from Firmino, who received Gomez's pass and immediately played a horizontal through ball.
Firmino had been running the whole time. He did not even know exactly what he was running toward, but at the final moment, he suddenly changed direction and moved toward Joe Gomez.
It was that brief one-second window to receive the ball that allowed him to find the chance to slip it through to Mané.
Mané received the ball on the wing and had already gone past Roberto, but Barcelona's players were well positioned inside the box.
Mané stopped his sprinting stride and played it back into midfield. Firmino received it, then quickly switched it to the right. Rodri took the ball and moved it on to Salah.
Normally, Salah would definitely choose to dribble and then shoot. That was his most familiar attacking method.
But this time, after controlling the ball, Salah swung his left leg as if he were going to shoot, only to send a curling pass back to Firmino.
Firmino touched it lightly back into the middle. He did not give it to Rodri, nor did he give it to Mané. He gave it to Leo Lin behind him.
Leo Lin had not been part of Barcelona's defensive plan at all until he appeared and received the ball. Rakitic's first attempt to stretch out a foot looked like it could win the ball, but Leo Lin went past him. Rakitic wanted to reach a little farther, but that would very likely have been a foul.
After getting past Rakitic, Leo Lin shaped his left leg as if to shoot. Then his body seemed about to come to an abrupt stop. Piqué knew he loved to fake the shot and cut inside, so he read the cutback in advance.
But this time, Leo Lin used the fake shot and cutback as a disguise for an actual shot.
Piqué thought he had successfully defended Leo Lin's next move, but in reality, Leo Lin had no next move. He was shooting.
Even Ter Stegen was fooled, and the ball flew into the goal without difficulty, shattering Camp Nou's defense.
"Leo Lin!"
"Leo Lin scores! Liverpool have stretched the aggregate score to five-nil!"
"A five-goal lead!"
"What kind of goal was that?"
"Before Liverpool scored, I couldn't even imagine who would take the final shot. Firmino?"
"Or Rodri?"
"I even thought it might be Joe Gomez, but I never imagined it would be Leo Lin."
"Because when Firmino finally passed him the ball, Leo Lin had not appeared at all."
"But once he appeared, Liverpool scored."
"Camp Nou's defense in front of him was like dragonflies darting through the sky. They looked difficult to catch, but all you had to do was split a bamboo pole, wrap it with a little spiderweb, and those beautiful dragonflies were yours."
"Firmino and Rodri were the split bamboo pole, and Leo Lin was the spiderweb wrapped around it at the very end."
"A goal like this, in the Champions League."
"A move like this, in the Champions League."
"What exactly is football to Liverpool?"
"In their football world, I can't see any trace of rigid training."
"People always say Klopp's tactics make Liverpool play exactly according to plan, but you simply cannot plan a goal like this."
"For all Liverpool players, for Leo Lin, for Rodri, for Wijnaldum, football is more like a colorful umbrella."
"When rain pours down, you stand in it and open that colorful umbrella, slowly spinning it. Drop after drop lands on the different colored panels, blooming into different colored universes. That is their football."
"Then what does football mean to everyone who loves them, to boys, to girls, to the elderly, to the young, and to us?"
"If you first noticed football by stumbling across a match on television, you may not even remember who was playing."
"They might have been two completely unknown teams, but they became your first lesson in football."
"If you first encountered football in a school PE class, maybe you couldn't play volleyball, maybe you couldn't play badminton, and then you felt football suited you better. You simply liked the feeling of sprinting across the pitch."
"If you came across football in university or after entering society, then maybe you have already missed a beautiful part of the football experience, but the football life that belongs to you in the future can still be beautiful."
"So I don't know what the answer is."
"Because this is a question with no fixed answer."
"I'm curious."
"When did you, in front of the screen, first encounter football?"
"And what does football mean to you?"
...
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