How the national media reacted to Liverpool's Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain at Anfield
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LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - MARCH 11: Arne Slot manager / head coach of Liverpool consoles Darwin Nunez of Liverpool after losing the penalty shoot out during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 UEFA Champions League 2024/25 Round of 16 Second Leg match between Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain at Anfield on March 11, 2025 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)
Liverpool boss Arne Slot consoles Darwin Nunez after he missed a penalty in the Champions League spot-kick defeat to PSG
(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)
Liverpool's hopes of a treble are over. The Premier League champions elect and Carabao Cup finalists are out of the Champions League after a painful penalty shoot-out defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.
Luis Enrique's side could count themselves desperately unfortunate to be trailing 1-0 to Harvey Elliott's last-gap goal from the first leg at the Parc des Princes. But, after withstanding an early barrage from the revved-up Reds, they cancelled that out within 12 minutes of last night's second leg at Anfield thanks to the prolific Ousmane Dembele.
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And, after a 120 minutes of football of the highest calibre, 1-0 to PSG was the way it stayed and so the dreaded spot-kicks were required to decide who would progress to the quarter-finals.
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And it was the Ligue 1 leaders who held their nerve, scoring all four of their penalties to triumph 4-1, with substitutes Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones missing for Liverpool, who now have the perfect chance to bounce back when they face Newcastle United in Sunday's Carabao Cup final at Wembley.
But more about that match soon. For now, here is what the national media, along with our own Paul Gorst, made of a dramatic evening on Merseyside...
Paul Joyce, in the Times, writes: "Back and forth it went. Breathless, unrelenting, emotions see-sawing. One moment Anfield expectant, the next fearful, until, finally, there was one team left standing. That it was Paris Saint-Germain, not Liverpool, owed as much to their powers of resilience as anything else - not a quality associated with them in the past - and also the sharp reflexes of Gianluigi Donnarumma.
"The goalkeeper, England’s nemesis when the Euro 2020 final came down to penalties, thwarted Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones during a nerve-shredding shoot-out and, with PSG faultless with all four of their spot-kicks, it was they who moved into the Champions League quarter-finals. Luis Enrique, their streetwise coach, had predicted the winner of an enthralling spectacle would reach the final, and the outcome will do nothing to shake his conviction. "It was the best game of football I was ever involved in," said a magnanimous Arne Slot and that will serve as some consolation today for Liverpool. They made history, although not the kind the head coach had craved. In the previous 39 ties when they had won the away leg first, they had always progressed into the next round.
"This was, in many ways, the reverse of what happened at the Parc des Princes last Wednesday. Donnarumma the hero, where Alisson had been defiant in the French capital, and Liverpool left to rue their inability to complement Harvey Elliott’s strike from six days ago.
"They had opportunities before and after Ousmane Dembele’s 13th-minute strike had brought parity on aggregate and the failure to take them arguably flags up just where this team need to improve next season.
"Slot is already mindful of that and has lamented that too many matches have gone down to the wire during his first season in charge. For a team who are 15 points clear at the summit of the Premier League, Liverpool have only won nine of 46 games in all competitions by a greater margin of two goals. A change in personnel, who can add a ruthless edge, is likely to be needed."
Sam Wallace, in the Telegraph, writes: "Top of the Champions League in January, out by mid-March - Liverpool were dispatched in a penalty shoot-out at the wrong end of Anfield, their nerve finally failing at precisely the moment this club has so often triumphed.
"Paris St-Germain won the toss at the end of a high-quality 120 minutes and took Liverpool down to the Anfield Road end where the visitors had their supporters. The Kop watched aghast as first Darwin Nunez and then Curtis Jones had their penalties saved by Gianluigi Donnarumma, the Italian who was the scourge of England at Euro 2020. It was only the second time Liverpool have lost a penalty shoot-out in European football, and it marked the end of their hopes of a treble of trophies this season.
"This young PSG side, which had levelled the tie with Ousmane Dembele’s 12th-minute goal, are formidable. They might have won this game within the first 120 minutes but in penalties Liverpool had a lifeline. They took only three before it was all over.
"At the end of the game Achraf Hakimi took a PSG flag to the centre of the pitch, much to the displeasure of the Kop who railed against what seemed like a celebration of a conquest. Even so, this Liverpool team that were top of the group stage league, a great pile of the 36 best teams in Europe, have fallen at the first knockout round. PSG had to negotiate an extra round to get this far and in doing so they seemed to have played themselves into being the form team of Europe.
"As Arne Slot would say later, without complaint, it is an unusual competition that takes the best team of the group stages - a Liverpool side that beat champions Real Madrid - and pitches them against a side as good as PSG. That just seems to be a consequence of Liverpool’s fast start and PSG’s slow one, and the convergence of the two was certainly a spectacular game.
"Perhaps Slot’s team had peaked too early, although there was an extraordinary edge to PSG. They were the unfortunate losers in Paris in the first leg and then against the Premier League’s runaway leaders they did at times make Liverpool look ordinary. New challenges come fast for Slot: he lost both Trent Alexander-Arnold and Ibrahima Konate to injury over the course of the evening and the Englishman, Slot said, will surely now be a doubt for the Carabao Cup final at Wembley on Sunday. This was a draining evening for them.
"At the end of the shoot-out PSG’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi celebrated in front of his team’s support in the Anfield Road end with the kind of joy that suggested a man who is under some pressure finally to nail this competition. Triumphing at Anfield in a European knockout tie still represents a great landmark for any team, even those clubs who seem to have it all. One could not help but be impressed at the flair in this post-Kylian Mbappe PSG team that has run away with the French league and now looks like a serious prospect for the Champions League."
Lewis Steele, in the Daily Mail, writes: "Last week, Alisson was the hero with what he described as the best night of his life. On Tuesday night, it was Donnarumma’s turn to defy logic with acrobatic saves, point-blank stops and a commanding nature to take control of dangerous crosses. Two penalty stops will make the headlines but this was another all-round imperious goalkeeping display.
"Around 30 minutes before kick-off, the Anfield DJ George Sephton played the Journey track Don’t Stop Believin’ and that felt apt for both of these teams as the pendulum of the tie kept swinging back and forth.
"In terms of the standard and quality on show, it is hard to recall a better game this season. This was a match fitting for a final and it truly felt like two heavyweights going at it, punch after punch. But as both goalkeepers made huge interventions, who would land the knockout blow?
"What we can safely say is, regardless of the result, these are the cream of the crop of Europe. The best of France against the best of England. Two great coaches and two great teams. One of them was knocked out but both will be back this time next year.
"PSG used to be a team who were laughing stocks of Europe for their lame exits of this competition. All the gear, no idea. No matter how much money they spent, or how many galactico-like juggernauts they had at their disposal, it felt like they were cursed on this stage.
"Not any more. Now, Enrique’s men are coming of age and they are the team to beat."
Jonathan Liew, in the Guardian, writes: "Afterwards, they carried on running. They had run for two hours, run themselves into the ground, run themselves delirious, but at the moment of triumph the players of Paris Saint-Germain somehow managed to find a few more yards in them. Ran towards their fans in the corner, ran in wild circles, tore across the Anfield grass as if it were the Champs-Elysees.
"One man did not run. As Desire Doue’s penalty hit the net, Vitinha simply crumpled, his legs finally giving way, his last drop of energy exhausted. Eventually, with his teammates still celebrating 70 yards away, he hauled himself to his feet and was the first to commiserate with Liverpool’s beaten players. Then, after they had dispersed, he simply stood in the centre circle for a few moments, as if finally claiming the turf for which he had spent the whole night fighting.
"This was an incredible game of football, really an incredible two games of football, during which it was hard not to suspect that we were watching the potential champions, however it ended. Ultimately it would have been devilishly harsh on Paris not to have progressed: dominant for at least two-thirds of this tie, explosive and precise in equal measure. In a way, Liverpool’s ability to restrict them to a single goal in 210 minutes was almost as impressive as anything they have achieved domestically this season.
"As brilliant as Liverpool have been under Arne Slot over the past seven months, here they met their match in the unlikeliest of forms. For those of you unfamiliar with Luis Enrique’s work, perhaps not even sure which channel broadcasts Ligue 1 these days, this really has been the most remarkable of transformations: backed by gallons of Qatari money, of course, but also by a clarity of purpose, by a wholesale shift in culture, and at times by sheer brute will.
"Many great coaches have tried and failed to remake this shrine to self-interest, to celebrity decadence, to consumption for consumption’s sake, to sisters’ birthday parties. But here, in adversity, Paris stuck together, fought together, thought together. It was if the James Bond franchise had been rebooted without Bond himself: reimagined as an ensemble piece about really hard-working MI6 analysts and translators and cybersecurity experts, because at the end of the day counterespionage is a team game, Des, y’know what I mean?"
And Paul Gorst, in the ECHO, writes: "It was substitutes Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones who missed the decisive penalties for Slot's men and no blame should be attributed to either for those pressured kicks, but the former struggled following his introduction for Diogo Jota, who once more toiled himself against the PSG defence.
"The difficulties both Nunez and Jota endured on the night laid bare more clearly than ever that Slot has to look to the market this summer for a shiny new No.9. This is not a reactive statement on the back of a damaging loss, either. The Reds might be strolling towards a second league championship in five years domestically but they are doing so largely on the back of the contributions of their wide forwards when it comes to goals, most notably Salah, who was unable to get the better of the brilliant Mendes.
"How different this tie might have been had that early chance found the back of the net? Slot might find himself unable to sleep on Tuesday replaying that moment.
"The boos that rang out from those on the Kop who had stayed behind long after the final whistle were reserved for Achraf Hakimi, the PSG captain, who strolled into the centre circle before unfurling a large banner that celebrated his club.
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"As provocative gestures go, it was not quite Graeme Souness planting a Galatasaray flag into the turf against loathed Istanbul rivals Fenerbahce, but it was enough to rile those who had stayed in the seats."Where's your European Cup!?" a half-full Kop demanded to know in response. The French champions might just have their answer later this year on this evidence. No.7 for Liverpool will have to wait."