Alisson shows his class for Liverpool once again with MOTM performance

Whilst Liverpool’s comfortable two-goal victory over Newcastle United was due to their two early incisive goals from Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo, many are overlooking the performance of Alisson Becker who shone at the weekend with a man-of-the-match performance.

The Brazilian has earned the right to be named amongst the top few goalkeepers in world football following a spell of personal and collective success at Liverpool after arriving from Roma in 2018.

Against Newcastle, he was seen making three top-class saves to deny Newcastle with key stops from Miguel Almiron and Callum Wilson ensured Liverpool didn’t slip up and whilst the team is still rediscovering their consistency, Alisson was there when they toiled.

Almiron was poised to score in just the fourth minute, but Alisson’s strong outstretched left-hand meant that Newcastle were denied an early lead.

Allan-Saint Maximin’s solo dribble and shot required a strong save too after the red card for Pope, but his best save was at the end of the match, as Newcastle pushed for a goal late on. Anthony’s Gordon set up Callum Wilson who shot first time but was denied by a trailing Alisson leg; not only were they key saves, but brilliant ones too.

We also saw him play a vital role in Nick Pope’s dismissial when his searching pass for Mohamed Salah after a corner caused the English shot-stopper to handle the ball outside of the box. We’ve already seen him do this type of pass to Salah on the counter-attack before on multiple occassions, with Alisson registering three assists for the Egyptian in total at Liverpool.

It’s something he puts down to their chemistry after many years playing together at Liverpool and previously Roma: “I know how fast he is. The only thing I need to do is a good pass, a good volley – I think this is one of my qualities as well.”

Fabinho reaffirmed just how important he is to the team when speaking to Liverpool’s official website: “In this game I think we didn’t need to suffer that much but Ali showed his quality again. He showed why he’s the best goalkeeper in the world, so when you have someone like him it’s always good.”

At 30, he’s entering into the prime years for a goalkeeper and will do so until his contract ends in 2027. With 214 games for Liverpool and an additional 61 for Brazil already under his belt, he will no doubt continue to add to those already impressive numbers in the coming years.