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Mohamed Salah savaged his former side Roma with a brilliant individual performance in a superb 5-2 Champions League semi-final first-leg victory undermined by two late goals for the visitors.<\/p>\nMohamed Salah savaged his former side Roma with a brilliant individual performance in a superb 5-2 Champions League semi-final first-leg victory undermined by two late goals for the visitors.<\/p>\n
The Egypt international was the star of a performance which began as a slow-burner before turning into a blistering evisceration of Serie A’s third-placed team.<\/p>\n
However, Roma showed they are still a threat with a late rally which may yet give Jurgen Klopp’s side a nervous 90 minutes at the Stadio Olimpico next week.<\/p>\n
Klopp had predicted Salah would face a rough time against the side he left in the summer but in truth none of his former team-mates could do anything to stop him.<\/p>\n
He scored two brilliant first-half goals – his 42nd and 43rd of an incredible season – with two also for Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane on target as well as Liverpool made the most of their first Champions League semi-final in a decade.<\/p>\n
The downside were goals from Edin Dzeko and Diego Perotti and a knee injury to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who left the pitch on a stretcher with his head in his hands and his knee in a brace to put his World Cup in some doubt.<\/p>\n
Roma almost silenced Anfield when goalkeeper Loris Karius misread the flight of former Manchester City defender Aleksandar Kolarov’s driven shot but managed to get enough of a hand on it to divert it onto the crossbar.<\/p>\n
But it was not long before the hosts had one of those passages of play which has become all too familiar to opposition teams.<\/p>\n
They blew away City in the quarter-final with three goals in 19 first-half minutes and it is no exaggeration to suggest they could have put this tie beyond the visitors in the final 17 minutes before the interval.<\/p>\n
Mane could have had a hat-trick, hitting two good chances over and having a sliding effort disallowed for offside, while Salah had a shot palmed away by Alisson having cut in from the right – a precursor of what was to come.<\/p>\n
Roma did not heed the warning and a few minutes later Salah was again allowed to cut in and shape a trademark shot with his left foot.<\/p>\n
He placed a curling shot in the only spot Alisson could not reach it, jamming it against the angle of post and crossbar on its way over the line.<\/p>\n
It was a goal befitting of the occasion but Salah’s second was equally brilliant.<\/p>\n
The unmarked Lovren headed over as Roma threatened to buckle under the pressure before the Egypt international struck in first-half added time.<\/p>\n
His exquisite lay-off to Firmino saw the Brazilian storm through midfield before playing a wonderfully-weighted return pass which Salah took one touch to control before dinking a shot over Alisson – a finish of which Lionel Messi would have been proud.<\/p>\n
After the break Salah turned provider, racing onto Trent Alexander-Arnold’s ball down the line to cross for Mane to turn home from close range.<\/p>\n
When Alexander-Arnold and Salah combined again, the latter leaving Juan Jesus completely bamboozled, Firmino was the beneficiary from a couple of yards out.<\/p>\n
Firmino’s header from a corner made it 5-0 but Dzeko’s neat finish and Perotti’s penalty gave Roma hope of repeating their brilliant quarter-final comeback at home to Barcelona.<\/p>\n