MILAN — Liverpool found respite and resolve at the San Siro, edging past Inter Milan in the Champions League without Mohamed Salah and offering embattled manager Arne Slot the most significant win of his tenure to date. Dominik Szoboszlai’s nerveless conversion from the penalty spot and a disciplined clean sheet ended Inter’s 18-match unbeaten home run in Europe and delivered Liverpool’s first away Champions League victory without Salah since 2009.
The significance ran deeper than the scoreline. After a fraught 72 hours and a bruising domestic setback at Leeds, a depleted 19-man squad flew to Italy, shut out one of Europe’s most robust attacks and left to the sound of the away end singing Slot’s name. It was Liverpool’s fourth win at the San Siro in as many years; this one, with Salah watching from nearly 1,000 miles away, felt like a hinge moment.
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“It doesn’t change anything. There’s obviously so much noise from the outside world, which is normal when you don’t perform,” captain Virgil van Dijk told Amazon Prime Sport. “It’s deserved as well. We want to improve, we want to be consistent and win games. We’re not doing it as much as we like. We have to stick together and be a unit as we have been. That’s what Liverpool stands for.”
Slot needed that unity to translate on the pitch, and it did. After goalkeeper Alisson Becker publicly backed his manager on Monday, Liverpool produced an assured, compact display in Milan — efficient in both boxes and far more controlled in transition. The clean sheet, coming on the heels of Saturday’s defensive capitulation, mattered almost as much as the points.
“We all needed it,” left-back Andy Robertson said. “We know the results and performances aren’t good enough. It’s important that this club is in the Champions League. It was a huge result for all of us.”
Beyond the collective, this was also about Szoboszlai, arguably Liverpool’s player of the season so far. He not only embraced the pressure of the penalty — a task Salah would normally assume — but continued a campaign in which he has been directly involved in more goals than any other Liverpool player (10: five goals, five assists). Slot praised both the midfielder’s poise and his engine in a relentless stretch.
“I have asked a lot of him,” the manager said. “What is also special is how much he runs — he is one of the few that played all four games in 10 days. It’s special what he is doing physically and also football wise, he stood up in a difficult moment. That was his first penalty for Liverpool during a game but he has a great shot and he delivered.”
The victory unfolded against an awkward backdrop. Salah did not travel to Milan after comments that brought internal consequences, a situation that dominated the pre-match conversation and threatened to overshadow the occasion. On the night, Liverpool made sure it did not.
Former Netherlands international Clarence Seedorf suggested post-match that “players can make mistakes,” prompting a measured response from Slot. “Everyone makes mistakes in life but does the player know he’s made a mistake? Should the initiative come from him or me? That’s another question,” he said.
Van Dijk declined to escalate the issue. “There is no point me saying if someone has let someone down. He didn’t travel based on the consequences of what he said. That’s it. He trained yesterday perfectly normal. Let’s see when we come back on Friday and see what the situation will be like. My focus is on the team and at this point Mo is still part of the team. We will see what happens.”
Slot preferred to keep the focus on those who played. “It should be about what we’ve done over here,” he said. “Tonight it should be all about a team, against a team like this who are winning at a stadium like this. The focus should be on that. Tonight it should be all about the players that are here. In the rich history Liverpool has had, they have had many of these evenings.”
It helped, too, that Liverpool’s hierarchy had a front-row view. Chief executive Michael Edwards was in attendance to watch a side that had lost nine of 12 at one stage stabilize to an unbeaten run of four across all competitions. Whether this marks a definitive turning point for Slot’s project will be proven in the weeks ahead, but the signs — organization without the ball, courage with it and a spine willing to own difficult moments — are finally pointing upward.
At full-time, the images told their own story: Liverpool’s players walking to the away end, acknowledging fans who had crossed continents for a midweek tie, and a manager receiving a chorus of approval in one of European football’s most exacting arenas. For a night at least, the conversation shifted from absence to presence — from who wasn’t there to those who showed up and stood firm.
Key takeaways from Liverpool’s win at the San Siro:
- First away Champions League victory without Mohamed Salah since 2009.
- Inter’s 18-match unbeaten home run in the Champions League snapped.
- Dominik Szoboszlai’s penalty and a clean sheet underscored a disciplined display.
- Fourth win at the San Siro in as many years for Liverpool.
- Signs of stabilization: now unbeaten in four after a run of nine defeats in 12.
Whatever comes next with Salah will arrive soon enough, likely at Liverpool’s next media briefing. The club, however, leaves Milan with something equally valuable: the proof that, with or without their star, they can still shape the narrative on Europe’s biggest stage.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
