With the 6-1 victory over Burnley, Willard's goals in the Premier League this season have reached an astonishing 71 goals, setting a world record for individual goals in a single season in football leagues around the world.
This is the first time that someone has scored more than 70 goals in a single league in a single season. What is even more incredible is that this is only the 28th round of the Premier League. Willard still has ten games to continue to break this record. .
By then, people are looking forward to whether Willard's Premier League single-season scoring record will break through 80 goals, 90 goals, or even 100 goals.
Liverpool's schedule has been so tight recently.
Just three days later, on March 10, Liverpool faced another tough battle with their archrival Manchester United at home. This time, the two sides played in the FA Cup quarter-finals.
In previous FA Cup games, Klopp consciously made substantial rotations and had no expectations of winning or losing. It's best to win, and losing can just reduce the pressure of multi-line combat.
But this double-red match is different. Manchester United is Liverpool's mortal enemy in the El Clasico, so they must go all out and cannot deliberately lose with a substitute lineup.
Even if it's an FA Cup match.
What's more, it's already the quarter-finals. If we can defeat Manchester United, advance to the semi-finals, and finally pass the test of the semi-finals, enter the finals and win the championship, it will undoubtedly be a good opportunity to win the Triple Crown.
Therefore, in addition to the injured captain Henderson, Liverpool's main players in this game include Willard, Coutinho, Firmino, Mane, Wijnaldum and others.
Manchester United also played their main players. However, Ibrahimovic was suspended due to accumulation of yellow cards in previous games. He was unable to play in this game. It was an away game at Anfield. Manchester United wanted to perform a miracle. , defeating rival Liverpool to advance to the semi-finals, the difficulty can be described as hell.
This is indeed how the game progressed, although Manchester United adopted a strict defensive counterattack strategy, trying to block Liverpool's attack, and then waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.
As a result, Liverpool's attack was not blocked, and its own counterattack failed.
Although Mourinho's big bus iron barrel formation is very good, even Velarde can't easily break into Longtan and drive the ball in, but Velarde still has the magical skills of long-range shots and set pieces.
Mourinho's team performed well and kept the 0-0 score until almost the end of the first half. However, in the 43rd minute, Willard was still beaten with a kick from outside the penalty area that was about 50 meters away from the goal. A powerful long-range shot from 32 meters scored the goal.
The ball was too powerful and too fast, and it went straight into the blind corner. Even with De Gea's reaction, he couldn't save the ball.
According to the final calculated speed, the speed of the ball reached an astonishing 147 kilometers per hour. It is no wonder that even though the ball flew such a distance in the air, De Gea failed to react in time to save the ball.
As a result, Liverpool entered the halftime break with a score of 1-0.
After 15 minutes, the two sides changed sides and fought again. Manchester United, which was one goal behind, could no longer defend. But the reality of being only one goal behind made them not attack resolutely enough, fearing that Liverpool would counterattack.
The result was that the offense failed to threaten and the defense failed to concentrate, conceding the ball again in the 74th minute.
This time, Willard's midfielder took the ball and ran past two people, attracting four people from Manchester United. Then he passed the ball to Coutinho on the left. Coutinho cut inside and attracted the goalkeeper De Hea's attention was drawn, and he shook off the defensive player and passed the ball to the back of the small penalty area.
Mane entered the penalty area from the right, threw away the defensive player from the back of the small penalty area, easily jumped into the top, and headed the ball into the goal.
De Gea was attracted to the left side of the goal by Coutinho just now. He couldn't fight back and could only watch the ball go into the net.
Liverpool leads Manchester United 2-0.
By this time, Manchester United could no longer hold on. Because the FA Cup is a game that determines the outcome in one round, if you lose, you lose, and you will never have a chance to come back.
Therefore, Mourinho could only remove Herrera, replace him with Lingard, push Rashford to the forward line, and start the attack.
In fact, Manchester United now has a top-heavy formation of 4132. Although Pogba is standing in the midfielder position, his own task is to organize the offense, and defense is not his strong point.
With such a formation, when facing a strong attacking team like Liverpool, if it cannot suppress the opponent's offense, the backcourt will easily be beaten into pieces.
Sure enough, although Manchester United has strengthened its offensive numbers, neither Rooney nor Rashford has the skills of Ibrahimovic to break through the Red Army defense line headed by Velarde. Instead, they have an empty backcourt. In the 82nd minute, he was caught and hit another counterattack.
This time, Willard directly aimed at the gap in Manchester United's backcourt. When receiving the pass from his teammate in the backcourt, he just stopped and deflected Rashford's counterattack, adjusted one step, and then directly passed a long pass. Through the ball, he accurately inserted the ball to the front of Manchester United's penalty area.
Along the way, two Manchester United players tried to stretch their feet to intercept the ball, but failed to touch it. This shows how accurate Willard's through ball was.
Firmino also understood Velarde's passing intention, and before the Manchester United defender could react, he started the moment Velarde passed the ball and rushed towards Manchester United's backcourt.
Defenders Smalling and Bailly, who were a bit slow to react, were both left behind by Firmino.
In the end, Firmino caught up with the ball and easily formed a single opportunity. Facing the attacking De Gea, he volleyed with a powerful kick, successfully breaking De Gea's interception and sending the ball into the near corner.
Liverpool rewritten the score to 3-0, completely sealing the victory.
In the remaining time, despite Manchester United's crazy counterattack, on the one hand, Liverpool took advantage of substitution opportunities to waste time and break the continuity of Manchester United's offense. On the other hand, the players were united and did not allow Manchester United to score even a goal.
After 3 minutes of stoppage time, the referee blew the whistle for the end of the game. Liverpool once again defeated their arch-rival Manchester United 3-0 at home and advanced to the semi-finals of the 2016/2017 FA Cup.
Regardless of whether we can win the championship in the end, as long as we can defeat our arch-rival Manchester United, we will be happy. Therefore, Liverpool players and fans celebrated for a long time in Anfield after the game. The Manchester United team hurriedly left the stadium as soon as the game ended.
Although their loss was not as big as Arsenal or Burnley, the score of 0-3 was still a disastrous defeat.
With the good mentality of defeating their arch-enemy Manchester United, four days later, on March 14, Liverpool continued to sit at home and faced the challenge of Porto in the second leg of the Champions League 1/8 finals.
After a 4-0 win over Porto in the first round with four away goals, Klopp made a lot of rotations in this game, with only a few main players such as Willard, Mane, and Klein. Players continue to start.
Of course, Porto wanted to take advantage of Liverpool's "careless" move to make a comeback, but unfortunately the Red Army did not do what they wanted.
Although most of the main players have been rotated, Velarde is still on the court. At least defensively, Porto will not be able to easily break through.
Throughout the game, Porto only completed three shots that hit the goal frame, but the threats were not great and were resolved by goalkeeper Mignolet.
On Liverpool's side, despite rotating most of their players, Villard and Mane, as well as Lallana, Sturridge, Origi and others were not bad at attacking, and they finally scored two goals. .
One of them was scored by Willard from a long shot, and the other was scored by Sturridge with a header from Lallana's cross.
In the end, Liverpool defeated Porto 2-0 at home, shutting out Porto 4-0 in the first leg, 2-0 in the second leg, and 6-0 in both legs, and advanced to the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League in the 2016/2017 season.
As all the Champions League matches of this round have come to an end, this season’s Champions League quarter-finals have also been released, including Liverpool and Leicester City from the Premier League, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid from La Liga, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and France from the Bundesliga. Monaco.
It was expected that teams outside the five major leagues would be wiped out, but Serie A was also wiped out, which is really surprising.
Of course, it's not without upsets.
Monaco drew with Manchester City 6-6 in two rounds and advanced with the advantage of more away goals, which was considered an upset. Leicester City defeated Juventus 3-2 and advanced to the quarterfinals, which was considered a super upset.
You know, Juventus is the top team in Serie A and the best at defense. However, they were unexpectedly eliminated by the new Champions League team Leicester City, which was shocking.
This is probably one of the reasons why the Blue Foxes have performed poorly in the Premier League this season. They have devoted most of their energy to the Champions League. Since their lineup is not strong, it is understandable that they have performed poorly in the league. .
After all the Champions League quarter-finals were announced, UEFA held a draw ceremony for the Champions League quarter-finals (quarter-finals) at its headquarters on March 17.
The final lineup is: Liverpool VS Barcelona, Dortmund VS Monaco, Bayern Munich VS Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid VS Leicester City.
As soon as the lineup came out, all neutral media and fans became excited.
Because the strengths and weaknesses are so clear, almost every game is a close conversation.
Liverpool VS Barcelona, Villarde and Messi, friends of the national team, turned against each other; Dortmund VS Monaco, both are two sub-strong teams in the Bundesliga and Ligue 1; Bayern VS Real Madrid, known as the European Derby; Atletico Madrid VS Les Bleus Manchester City is a showdown between the strongest dark horse and a quasi-rich club.
No matter which game is played, it seems to be evenly matched, and there will definitely be a battle between the two.
Neutral media and fans are delighted.
After the draw ceremony, Velarde also made a special call to Messi, saying that he would give his best in the game and would not give up.
Messi said that no matter how easy it is, Barcelona is not a team like Burnley and can let Liverpool bombard them indiscriminately.
