Marcos Llorente scored again at Anfield on Wednesday. He did it last season too, twice, in a game Atlético also lost. At some point that stops being a coincidence and starts being a diagnosis, and it's not a flattering one for Diego Simeone's team.
Liverpool beat Atlético Madrid 2-1 in their Champions League league-phase opener, and on the balance of the ninety minutes, Atlético had every right to leave with something. Llorente put them ahead, assisted by Julián Álvarez, of all people, the same Álvarez whose future at the club has been the subject of constant noise all summer and into the early rounds of the season. There's a nice irony in that: the player everyone in Madrid keeps talking about as a problem is the one who set up the goal. Dominik Szoboszlai leveled it before half-time, assisted by Ronald Araújo, and Alexis Mac Allister settled it early in the second half. Liverpool won. Atlético didn't.
That pattern isn't new. Liverpool have won each of their last four meetings with Atlético in major European competition, a run that flipped an early head-to-head deficit in Liverpool's favor. And when Atlético score first in the Champions League, they basically don't lose. This looks to be only the second time in a long stretch that a Simeone team has taken the lead in this competition and walked away with nothing. Twice in a row isn't bad luck; it's a team that can find a goal but can't protect one, and against a club of Liverpool's pedigree, that gap gets punished.
It also fits a wider opening-night problem for Atlético in Europe. They've now lost their Champions League opener in consecutive seasons, an unusual run of first-round slippage for a club with Atlético's history in this competition. One bad opening night is noise; two in a row, against different opponents, starts to look structural, whether that's game management or a defense that isn't built the way it used to be. That's a read, not a settled fact, but the pattern backs it up: Atlético are giving away control of games they've actually started well, and that's on the manager as much as the players.
None of that should obscure what this result means for Liverpool. This was Andoni Iraola's first Champions League match in charge, and his domestic start had been shaky, with draws against Newcastle and Nottingham Forest sandwiching mixed form before a win at Ipswich. A comeback European win over a club with Atlético's résumé is the kind of result that buys a new manager patience, and Iraola will take it gladly. Mac Allister was the difference, cool and decisive while the game was still level, and he earned the headline.
Liverpool's night wasn't unblemished, though. Bradley Barcola, the club's expensive summer arrival, was in line for more minutes and instead picked up an injury during the match, souring an otherwise good night. Nobody's said yet how serious it is, and I won't guess. Just a fact worth flagging without panic.
Step back and this is one match, the first of eight in a long league phase. It would be foolish to read it as proof of anything permanent about either project. Iraola has a long way to go before this Liverpool team feels like his, and Simeone has plenty of games left to fix whatever's gone wrong at the start of these last two European campaigns. But if there's one clear signal from Anfield, it's this: Llorente can keep scoring against Liverpool every year for the rest of his career, and it won't help Atlético's record one bit unless someone in that back line remembers how to see out a lead.
