The new league phase of the UEFA Champions League does not seem to be popular with fans. However, it did give us, Hungarian football fans a special treat: national team captain Dominik Szoboszlai’s Liverpool faced off against Péter Gulácsi and Willi Orbán’s RB Leipzig—coincidentally, on the Hungarian national holiday of 23 October.
The last time both sides in a UCL group (or now, league) game featured Hungarian internationals was back in December 2006, when the Belgian club Anderlecht hosted the Greek AEK Athen. Centre-back Roland Juhász was in the home side’s starting line-up; while midfielder Dániel Tőzser was in the visitors’. That game ended in a 2–2 tie.
This time we had three Hungarian internationals among the two teams’ starters. Dominik Szoboszlai was in the English club Liverpool’s midfield. On the home side, the line-up for the German club RB Leipzig featured Péter Gulácsi in goal and Willi Orbán at centre-back. All three stayed on the pitch for the full 90 minutes.
To make the clash even more interesting, Szoboszlai was facing off against his former club, having played for Leipzig between 2021 and 2023.
Darwin Núnez opened the scoring for Liverpool in the 27th minute. Mohamed Salah’s header already seemed to be goalbound, but Núnez pounced on it and helped the ball in from just a few yards anyways. This drew some scolding from Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk.
However, it was also enough to win the game for Liverpool.
Of the Hungarians, Gulácsi gave the best performance. He made four impressive saves, after two close-range headers in the first half; one very close-range shot at the beginning of the second half, and finally, a classic top-corner, full-stretch save after a long-range shot at the end of the game.
RB Leipzig captain Willi Orbán gave a solid performance. However, it seemed he got away with one near the end of the second half, as the video-assisted referee system chose not to check a suspicious challenge by him on Darwin Núnez inside the penalty area. Szoboszlai contributed to Liverpool’s victory as well. However, he could not quiet the calls from Liverpool fans (and even his head coach Arne Slot) for more goals and assists. So far, he scored one goal in this season in 11 games, against AC Milan in the Champions League.
Liverpool and Leipzig have the exact opposite record in the UCL league phase so far. Szoboszlai’s team has won all three of their games, while Gulácsi and Orbán’s have lost all three. However, due to the odd new format, RB Leipzig still has plenty of chances to advance to the next round in the tournament, as a whopping 24 out of 36 do so. The only difference is that the 1–8th place go to the Round of 16 automatically; while the 9th–24th place finishers have to play a play-off round against each other.
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