Liverpool came from two goals down to beat Villarreal 4-3 in a remarkable Champions League night at Anfield on Tuesday, with Alexis Mac Allister scoring twice and Rio Ngumoha producing a performance that will live long in the memory.
Andoni Iraola’s side trailed 2-0 inside half an hour and looked set for an embarrassing home defeat. By the 68th minute they had scored four times. It makes it nine points from nine in the league phase and a third straight win since the 3-0 home defeat by Manchester City earlier this month, but conceding three goals for the second Champions League game running leaves Iraola with plenty to fix.
A disastrous opening half-hour
Iraola made six changes from Saturday’s win at Brentford, bringing in Kostas Tsimikas, Trey Nyoni, Ryan Gravenberch, Rio Ngumoha, Lewis Koumas and Cody Gakpo. Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Bradley Barcola started on the bench. Iraola later explained that Isak’s workload is being managed after his recent injury, while Wirtz and Barcola would have been making a fourth start in 10 days.
The selection seemed to backfire almost immediately. With four minutes gone, Virgil van Dijk tried to head a long ball from Renato Veiga back to Alisson, but it fell short and Georges Mikautadze nipped in to finish. It was a rare error from the captain, and his raised hands showed he knew it.
Liverpool were disjointed, their press was half-hearted and Villarreal, coached by Iraola’s old Athletic Club team-mate and former assistant Iñigo Pérez, passed their way through midfield with ease. In the 29th minute Nathan Saliba slipped a pass through the middle and left-back Sergi Cardona, played onside by Tsimikas, ran through to beat Alisson. At that stage it was no more than Villarreal deserved.
Mac Allister sparks the fightback
When Liverpool needed someone to take responsibility, Mac Allister answered the call. In the 36th minute he rose to meet Tsimikas’ corner and glanced a header across former Liverpool keeper Péter Gulácsi and into the far corner. He joked afterwards that he isn’t tall, but he timed the jump perfectly.
Anfield suddenly had something to believe in. Mac Allister drove another effort narrowly wide, and with the final action of the half Liverpool were level. Ngumoha clipped a cross to the back post, Cardona let it drop behind him, and Ronald Araújo was there to head in from close range. It was his second goal in as many Champions League games, and he celebrated in the Anfield Road End.
Iraola’s half-time switch
Araújo had just scored, but he didn’t come out for the second half. Wirtz replaced him, with Gravenberch moving from the No 10 role to right-back. Iraola said the change was tactical and that Araújo is fine: he wanted Gravenberch to help deal with Villarreal’s overloads in midfield and give Ngumoha more support down the right.
It worked. Liverpool were transformed after the break, and Gulácsi had to keep out efforts from Gravenberch, Gakpo and Wirtz before the breakthrough came.
Ngumoha takes over
In the 65th minute, Ngumoha took a pass from Mac Allister, skipped away from Cardona and then substitute Juan Foyth, and pulled the ball back from the byline. Mac Allister had timed his run perfectly and smashed it in off the underside of the bar to give Liverpool the lead for the first time.
Three minutes later it was 4-2. Tsimikas and Gakpo combined down the left, and Wirtz took Gakpo’s pass and drilled a low left-footed shot into the far corner for his first goal of the season.
Iraola singled out the assist: “He can even go down for a penalty, but he decides to continue and takes a great decision.”
Ngumoha was the best player on the pitch by a distance. He was named UEFA’s player of the match, and supporters agreed, voting him Liverpool’s Player of the Match. The club says he was “the landslide selection” in its post-match poll. BBC Sport’s figures show he completed seven of his eight dribbles and had 12 touches in Villarreal’s box. When he was replaced by Barcola in the 74th minute, Anfield gave him a standing ovation, and Duran Duran’s Rio was played at the final whistle.
The 18-year-old became the youngest player to assist a goal for Liverpool in the Champions League. The club, citing Opta, says that at 18 years and 52 days he is also the youngest Liverpool player to provide an assist in any European competition, a record Michael Owen had held since setting up a goal against Valencia in November 1998, aged 18 years and 324 days.
“It’s up there with one of the best I’ve played,” Ngumoha told Prime Video. “We have the best fans in the world and to hear my name chanted is a dream.”
Daniel Sturridge, working for Prime Video, was just as impressed: “On the ball, this kid has so much quality. It is stuff you can’t teach. What he does with the ball at his feet, it is God-given ability.”
Iraola was delighted, but he also kept his feet on the ground: “That’s the good thing with Rio, he’s still 18, he’s not the full package. It’s not going to be always like this, he will have ups and downs in the process.”
Mac Allister’s night
Ngumoha took the headlines, but Mac Allister’s two goals were just as important. With Dominik Szoboszlai injured, his runs into the box gave Liverpool a goal threat from midfield that they badly needed, and Iraola praised his composure: “when you are 2-0 down, you are not playing well, he doesn’t panic, he organises.”
Afterwards he gave Iraola a lot of the credit for Liverpool’s improvement since last season. “Last season something wasn’t right in the group and this manager changed it, and that’s really important,” he told Prime Video.
A nervous finish
Liverpool couldn’t keep up that intensity. Substitute Ayoze Pérez hit the post, and three minutes from time he crossed for Tani Oluwaseyi, on at half-time, to finish at the back post. Anfield was briefly anxious, but Liverpool saw it out.
Pérez admitted his side hadn’t been able to handle the emotion of the night, while Iraola summed it up simply: “They were much better than us in the first half, and we were much better in the second half.”
The win leaves Liverpool second after Tuesday’s games, level on nine points with leaders Paris Saint-Germain, who are ahead on goal difference.
It was only the second time Liverpool have won a European Cup or Champions League game after going two goals down. The other was also against Villarreal, when they came from 2-0 down to win 3-2 in the 2022 semi-final second leg.
The defensive worries
For all the excitement, this was not a night that should leave anyone comfortable. Liverpool conceded three at LASK last week, even while scoring six, and have now let in six goals in their last two European games. Seven conceded in three Champions League matches is not the record of a side that wants to go deep in this competition.
What makes it worrying is that the goals came in three different ways. The first was an individual error: Van Dijk’s header back to Alisson was underhit and Mikautadze was handed the lead with four minutes on the clock. The second was structural. Saliba picked a pass through the middle, Tsimikas stayed too deep and played Cardona onside, and Ngumoha didn’t track the run. The third came when the game looked won, and Villarreal had already been warned when Ayoze Pérez hit the post.
Iraola didn’t hide from it. “We’ve probably started too relaxed in the game and even at the end, the 4-2,” he said in his post-match press conference, published by the club. “You think it’s done and they keep you there until the end, because they are a very good team.”
He was just as frank about why the first half went so wrong. Villarreal, he said, are “not a team that you can just press a little bit and [that is] enough. No, no, you go full gas and you go all the way or probably you are going to struggle without the ball.”
That is the real lesson. Liverpool only found that intensity once they were behind. In Iraola’s words, it took being “2-0 down, and then, OK, we have nothing to lose and then we need to be without the handbrake.” A side that only plays without the handbrake after conceding twice is living dangerously, and the better teams in this competition won’t hand them a two-goal head start and then let them back into the game.
The KopTalk view is that the attacking side Iraola is building is genuinely exciting, and Ngumoha, Mac Allister and Wirtz showed what it can do. But the next step is to start games the way they finished the second half and to manage a 4-2 lead properly. That challenge starts against Brighton at Anfield on Sunday (2pm UK).
For now, supporters can celebrate a tremendous European comeback, nine points from nine and an extraordinary night from one of the club’s most exciting young players. Liverpool showed real character to recover from 2-0 down. Now they need to stop putting themselves in those positions in the first place.
Match details
Liverpool 4-3 Villarreal, Champions League league phase, matchday three. Anfield, Tuesday 20 October 2026.
Goals: Mikautadze 4′ (0-1), Cardona 29′ (0-2), Mac Allister 36′ (1-2), Araújo 45+2′ (2-2), Mac Allister 65′ (3-2), Wirtz 68′ (4-2), Oluwaseyi 87′ (4-3).
Liverpool: Alisson; Araújo (Wirtz 46), Jacquet (Gomez 74), Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Mac Allister, Nyoni (McConnell 81); Ngumoha (Barcola 74), Gravenberch, Gakpo; Koumas (Isak 66).
Unused subs: Mamardashvili, Woodman, Kerkez, Chambers, Danns, Laffey.
Attendance: 59,610.
KopTalk Man of the Match: Rio Ngumoha (also UEFA’s player of the match and the supporters’ choice in the club’s Player of the Match vote).
The debate: Has Ngumoha now played his way into Iraola’s strongest XI, and how worried should we be about the goals Liverpool keep conceding? Have your say below.
