Fenerbahçe's late collapse-punishing comeback exposes Liverpool's unraveling defence
Dirk Kuyt's first game as Fenerbahçe interim coach ended with a 3-2 win over his old club, built on two Liverpool leads squandered and a Vedat Muriqi header that sealed it.
Fenerbahçe beat Liverpool 3-2 in Istanbul on Wednesday, coming from behind twice in a Champions League tie that doubled as Dirk Kuyt's first match in interim charge of the Turkish club against the team where he spent six seasons as a player, as reported by The Analyst and Guardian Football.
Vedat Muriqi settled it with a 79th-minute header, his first Champions League goal, after Fenerbahçe had twice pegged Liverpool back having trailed, first to Trey Nyoni's maiden senior goal and then to a header from substitute Alexander Isak, according to the Guardian's Andy Hunter.
It is Liverpool's second consecutive defeat following Sunday's loss to Arsenal, and it ends their 100% record in this season's competition, the Guardian reports.
An opening burst that promised more than it delivered
Liverpool announced their intentions inside five minutes, registering four shots in that span, the first time they have managed that in a Champions League match since facing Real Madrid in March 2009, per Opta data cited by The Analyst.
That early territorial dominance should have yielded more than it did. Kostas Tsimikas appeared to handle inside his own box under pressure from Mason Greenwood, yet no penalty was given, an incident The Analyst flagged as a let-off for the visitors rather than for the hosts.
Fenerbahce's response to going behind was almost instant in quality if not in end product: Irfan Can Kahveci met an Archie Brown cross from close range only to crash his effort against the crossbar, moments before Greenwood's deflected free-kick, which took a heavy touch off Jeremy Jacquet and wrong-footed Alisson, drew the hosts level in the 29th minute.
Two leads, two concessions, one collapse
What ultimately decided the contest was not Liverpool's inability to create but their inability to protect what they had built. Having gone ahead through Nyoni's deflected volley off a loose clearance, and again through Isak's header after a triple substitution changed the visitors' shape, Liverpool surrendered both advantages within minutes each time.
Andy Hunter's framing in the Guardian is pointed: the defeat was careless and avoidable, consistent with the pattern that has now produced back-to-back losses for Andoni Iraola's side. His diagnosis before kickoff concerned fixing Liverpool going forward; instead it was the defensive side of the pitch that failed under pressure from a Fenerbahce team previously without a win in the group phase.
Bradley Barcola's quiet evening compounds the problem for Iraola. A forward brought on to add penetration instead faded from the contest, the Guardian notes, leaving Liverpool short of answers even as Greenwood and Lukaku combined for further half-chances, including one cutback that went begging after the equaliser.
Ederson's role at the other end mattered too. Fenerbahce's goalkeeper denied both Barcola and a Virgil van Dijk header after the restart, keeping the scoreline level long enough for Muriqi's late intervention to count, per The Analyst's account of the second-half action.
Kuyt's old ground, new job
The symbolism of the result was not lost on anyone in Istanbul. Kuyt made 285 appearances in a Liverpool shirt after his £10million move from Feyenoord in the summer of 2006, debuting as a substitute for Peter Crouch in a 2-1 win over West Ham that August, as Planet Football's Dave Tindall recounts.
He arrived at Anfield as a proven goalscorer from a Feyenoord side he had fired to 71 goals in 101 games, stepping into a Rafael Benitez squad still searching for an identity between strikers following the 2005 Champions League triumph, according to Tindall's account of that era.
None of that history altered the balance of Wednesday's match, but it gave Kuyt's first win as interim coach a sharper edge: beating the club that shaped his playing career, with a team that had managed nothing better than a winless start to its own European campaign before kickoff.
For Iraola, the consequence is more immediate than nostalgic. Two defeats in a row, a dropped unbeaten Champions League record, and a defence that twice failed to protect a lead against a side under a first-time interim coach leave questions about structure, not just personnel, heading into Liverpool's next assignments.