Alexis Mac Allister lauded Rio Ngumoha after the teenager put in a brilliant performance in Liverpool’s comeback win over Villarreal in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday night.
The Reds went two goals down in the first half thanks to some poor defending. Georges Mikautadze struck a low shot past Alisson Becker after virgil van Dijk misplaced a header. The backline got their offside trap all wrong for the second, allowing Sergi Cardona to calmly slot the ball home.
Alexis Mac Allister got one back moments later when he headed in from a corner and the hosts levelled matters on the stroke of halftime when Ronald Araujo popped up at the back post with a header of his own.
Mac Allister put Liverpool ahead in the second half with a first-time finish off a cross from Rio Ngumoha, his second assist of the night. Minutes later, Florian Wirtz provided a lovely finish to give them a two-goal cushion.
Former Newcastle United attacker Ayoze Perez found Tani Oluwaseyi completely unmarked at the back post to reduce the deficit to one, but Liverpool were able to hold on for a dramatic 4-3 victory.
Mac Allister hails Ngumoha as Liverpool beat Villarreal in seven-goal thriller
“It wasn’t an easy game,” Mac Allister told Amazon Prime. “Look at Rio, he was amazing tonight. He made the difference. He was really important and I’m glad for him.
“It’s clear the quality he has. Everyone knows. It’s easy to say he’s a really good player but he needs to focus on other things. He worked really hard off the ball.
“I would say 35 minutes into the first half, we made some changes. I dropped to the middle to keep more possession because we were not playing well. In the second half, we scored the goals, which is important.
“The idea was to play more on the right and open up more. We did it quite well but we were not dominating the game. After that, the manager changed and we did well.”
Tuesday’s Champions League results:
- Fenerbahce 2-2 Slavia Prague
- Sabah 1-2 Borussia Dortmund
- Liverpool 4-3 Villarreal
- Manchester City 5-1 AEK Athens
- Napoli 4-3 Bodo/Glimt
- Paris St-Germain 4-2 Barcelona
- Porto 0-1 PSV Eindhoven
- Roma 4-0 Slovan Bratislava
- Stuttgart 1-1 Atletico Madrid
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