Published: 22:32, 4 November 2025 | Updated: 22:32, 4 November 2025

Outside Anfield, the fireworks sputtered and died in the teeming rain. Inside Anfield, it was a place for the rocket’s red glare and bombs bursting in air. It was a place of roars and frenzy and chanting for Stevey Heighway on the wing and for Conor Bradley, for heroes old and new. It was raw and it was visceral.

And when it was done and the mighty Real Madrid had been vanquished and this old stadium had delivered another passion play on another memorable European night under the lights, Liverpool’s season felt alive again, alive with possibility and hope and ambition.

The rocket came from Alexis Mac Allister a bullet of a header that whizzed past the head of Thibault Courtois so fast and so furiously that he did not even have time to duck. It was a goal that was a fitting way to gild a Liverpool performance that revived memories of the relentlessness of the Jurgen Klopp era.

It was not a happy return to English shores for Jude Bellingham, who...