Jurgen Klopp seemed blown away by his ‘unbelievable’ Liverpool player in the victory over Brighton today.
A win like this against Brighton is often underestimated. Most of the time, it’s the games that are memorable which are remembered.
Meanwhile, 2-1 victories like this against a team not in the top six are far too often forgotten about. However, these victories can often be the difference in winning the Premier League title.
Brighton today could have easily ended up being a banana skin for Liverpool. Even on paper,Liverpool hadn’t beaten Brighton in over four years at Anfield. Jurgen Klopp had never beaten Roberto De Zerbi in four previous meetings.
And then Danny Welbeck scored within the first few minutes of the game. It just seemed like history might repeat itself. But Liverpool always looked confident, and with the quality they had on the pitch – there was always going to be a way out.
Jurgen Klopp on what impressed him about ‘unbelievable’ Dominik Szoboszlai
The way Mohamed Salah and Alexis Mac Allister ultimately combined to score Liverpool’s second of the game was brilliant.
Mac Allister’s pass to Salah was perfectly weighted, and the finish was sublime as usual from the Egyptian. However, what went unnoticed is the creativity before that passage of play to spot Mac Allister by Dominik Szoboszlai.
The Hungarian sent a fantastic pass to the Argentine, and it really opened up the space for Liverpool to exploit Brighton’s low defensive block.
Speaking after the game, Jurgen Klopp was really impressed by Szoboszlai, and highlighted his number eight’s contribution to the second goal.
“That is an unbelievable ball [from Dominik Szoboszlai],” Klopp told BBC MOTD.
“It is the creativity and the quality, seeing that. He sees Macca, his first touch is incredible and then he sees Mo. How wasteful we were at all the other moments. It was good we had this genius football moment to finish the game off.”
Dominik Szoboszlai’s numbers against Brighton
The 23-year-old went under the radar in this match. There were certainly more notable performances like that of Mac Allister.
However, Szoboszlai put in a solid performance behind the scenes, covering a lot of ground and restricting Brighton’s space as they tried to play out from the back.
He has been a key cog in Jurgen Klopp’s machine, and the numbers point towards that as well. Here are his key stats as per to Fotmob:
- 3 chances created.
- 6 recoveries made – the joint most in midfield.
- 7 passes into the opposition’s final third.
- 2/3 aerial duels won.
- 70 touches
- 4 touches into the opposition’s penalty area