Spanish media celebrate ‘brutal’ Real Madrid win against Liverpool in Champions League

The Spanish media were certainly quick to herald Real Madrid’s 5-2 win over Liverpool as a historic night in the Champions League as the reigning champions swept aside last year’s fellow finalists. It was a victory described as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘brutal’ by the press.

Sports daily AS described the performance as being on cloud nine: ‘In the sky!’ read their front page story. ‘Real Madrid seal a historic night at Anfield after going two goals down from the 14th minute’.

Even Barcelona-based newspaper Sport described the win as a ‘triumphant walk in Anfield’, whilst Mundo Deportivo labelled the comeback as ‘brutal’.

On top of that Marca, who famously cover Real, paid homage to the performance and the passing of former player Amancio Amaro Varela, who died aged 83. He scored 155 goals across 14 seasons for Real and the paper claimed the performance was in honour of the Spanish midfielder: “Historic performance of Madrid in honor of Amencio”.

Darwin Nunez had scored early to fire Liverpool into an early lead, rounding off a brilliant move with an even better finish. Mohamed Salah then punished Thibaut Courtois’ moment of madness to fire the Reds into an early 2-0 lead.

Fans at Anfield looked set to celebrate another big night in Europe but a brace each for Karim Benzema and Vinicius Junior as well as a header from Eder Militao saw Los Blancos recover to secure a historic win.

Despite the margin of victory, manager Carlo Ancelotti praised Liverpool and claimed the tie is still not over: “I have to say, honestly, Liverpool is still a fantastic team in my opinion because they are able to still play with the intensity that is difficult to find. Liverpool didn’t change - our strategy was different for sure.

“We planned to play a different game from the final. The final was a low block and try to play on the counter attack. Tonight was a bit different. “This is only the first part of a knockout tie, it’s gone our way, but we’ll need to imagine that in the second leg we’ll have to suffer and work hard.