Liverpool avoid late Bournemouth scare to win Premier League opener

Bournemouth combat backmost from 2 down but Liverpool unafraid precocious triumph connected affectional Anfield night.

Liverpool talisman Mo Salah and chap guardant Federico Chiesa struck precocious goals arsenic the Premier League champions began the defence of their rubric by beating Bournemouth 4-2 successful a thriller connected the opening nighttime of the play astatine Anfield.

On a bittersweet Friday evening charged with emotion aft the July decease of Liverpool guardant Diogo Jota, newcomer Hugo Ekitike bagged a extremity connected his league debut to enactment the hosts up aft 37 minutes, and Cody Gakpo doubled the pb successful the 49th.

But Antoine Semenyo, who was the people of racist maltreatment successful the archetypal fractional that led to a intermission successful the game, pulled 1 backmost for the visitors successful the 64th infinitesimal and completed a treble 12 minutes aboriginal to stone Liverpool and daze the location fans.

However, substitute Chiesa sent the Liverpool faithful distant blessed with an 88th-minute onslaught aft goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic swatted distant a shot into the container by Salah, who scored himself heavy into added clip to wrapper up the 3 points.

Salah chased the shot past the defence earlier cutting wrong and firing into the bottommost country with a extremity that enactment the Egypt planetary joint-fourth with Andy Cole connected the all-time Premier League scorers’ database with 187.

An affectional Salah pointed to the heavens and flapped 2 hands to mimic Jota’s shark extremity celebration.

He headed for The Kop basal aft the last whistle and wiped distant tears portion applauding the fans who were singing Jota’s opus to the tune of Bad Moon Rising.

Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo scores their 2nd extremity [Peter Powell/Reuters]

The nighttime started with an affectional minute’s soundlessness for Jota and his member Andre Silva, who died successful a car crash. Fans fought backmost tears arsenic they sang You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Ekitike, who has joined from Eintracht Frankfurt, was the astir awesome of manager Arne Slot’s close-season signings successful a spending spree topping 300 cardinal pounds ($406.53m).

“Obviously, I deliberation it was a bully performance, I could bash better,” said Ekitike, who held up 2 fingers successful 1 hand, and made a zero with the different aft his goal, a tribute to Liverpool’s Jota, who wore fig 20.

“But the astir important happening was winning, the mentality we showed. Obviously, we wanted to triumph contiguous for the radical who came and for Diogo,” added the 23-year-old forward.

The crippled was halted for respective minutes aft Bournemouth’s Ghana planetary Semenyo reported the racist abuse.

“It’s wholly unacceptable,” Bournemouth skipper Adam Smith said. “Kind of successful daze to beryllium honorable that it happened. In this time and age, it shouldn’t beryllium happening.

“I don’t cognize however Ant’s played connected to beryllium honorable and travel up with those goals … Something has to beryllium done. We’ll enactment him successful determination and hopefully, he’ll beryllium OK.”

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies