Alvarez: A 'golazo' – and summer move? Plus: Liverpool 'ripped apart' by PSG

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Plus: Liverpool ‘ripped apart’ by PSGAlvarez celebrates his goal against Barcelona Eric Alonso/Getty Images Share full articleThe Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic’s daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox. Hello! Barcelona are fluttering their eyelids at Julian Alvarez. He’s not exactly putting them off. 😬 Liverpool “ripped apart” by PSG 🐰 Diving down an EPL rabbit hole 🖼️ Defender’s ‘trivela’ masterpiece The best thing Barcelona can do this morning is to screw their eyes up tightly and imagine Julian Alvarez wearing their colours next season. Pull that transfer off, and he’ll be doing to others what he did to them at Camp Nou last night. Links between Alvarez and Barca have been brewing for months — the worst-kept secret going — and his stonking free-kick goal for Atletico Madrid in the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final yesterday (“a golazo”, to quote his coach Diego Simeone) will only intensify the chatter. Barca would have to pay top-dollar for the forward but here, in one strike of the ball, was the reason why they’re tempted to. Alvarez himself is fairly humourless when speculation about a move to Catalonia arises (he’s under contract at Atletico after all, and questions over his future are incessant). His deal in Madrid runs to 2030 and a release clause imposed by Atletico is set at a whacking £436m ($577m). Nobody expects a rival club to actually pay so much — release clauses in Spain are often little more than posturing — but it tells you how highly Atletico rate the Argentina international. If he leaves, he’ll do so on their terms. As it happens, the 26-year-old isn’t having a stellar season. He’s scored once in La Liga since November 1. But his set-piece strike yesterday, a curling hit from outside the box (above), a minute after Barca’s Pau Cubarsi was sent off, could be worth its weight in gold. Alexander Sorloth added a second goal late in the game, and Atletico take a 2-0 aggregate advantage back to the Spanish capital. Barca, for all their ability, will do well to get themselves out of this tangle. Incredibly, the victory is the first Simeone has ever registered at Camp Nou as Atletico manager. I always do a double-take on seeing that stat because he’s been in charge there for over 14 years, and in that time, they’ve been a thorn in the sides of Barca and Real Madrid. When Atletico lost narrowly to neighbours Madrid in the 2014 and 2016 Champions League finals, I assumed Simeone’s chances of touching the trophy had gone. But hope springs eternal. The waters around Arne Slot are rising so high that part of him must have been tempted to go for broke in last night’s other quarter-final first leg with Liverpool; to play with abandon and take on hosts and reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain at their own game. Slot, after all, has been moaning recently about teams outperforming their expected goals (xG) calculations whenever they play his lads, but he took zero gambles at the Parc des Princes, and Liverpool lost 2-0. Even then, they got away with one. PSG had chance after chance and deserved the luck of a wicked deflection for their opener, scored by Desire Doue, above. Slot, who packed his defence with three centre-backs, accepted that Liverpool were “completely ripped apart”. And yet, they’re still in the tie, somehow. Slot is hoping for a “different game” at Anfield on Tuesday, and it wouldn’t be the first time that home advantage has given Liverpool a lease of life in the Champions League. But you’d stake nothing on them shutting PSG out during that second leg, and Slot just doesn’t have his hand on the tiller. To look at the body language of his players, they’ll take some convincing that PSG are there to be beaten in that return fixture. The Athletic’s Stu James isn’t giving them a prayer. The Premier League and competitions like it have learned to monetise everything. And I mean everything. The value it places on broadcast rights is so high that its running battles with illicit streaming sites will rage until the end of time. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to be treated to ‘The Archive’ in December: highlights of every Premier League season since 1992-93, provided by the Premier League itself and made available for free. No word of a lie, it’s the rabbit hole to beat all rabbit holes. What was The Athletic’s inevitable reaction? To send Art de Roché down that rabbit hole and tell him to have some fun in it. His trawl back through the years provoked a warm glow of nostalgia. Among other things, I’d never have guessed that as many as 18 Premier League games have finished 4-4. I can’t reminisce about the competition’s history without thinking of the 4-3 epic between Liverpool and Newcastle United in 1996 (the Totally Football Show went to town on it a few days ago). I was 15, and my parents wouldn’t pay for Sky Sports — can you hear the tiny violins? — so friends and I watched the game through a pub window. Or did until the landlord told us to jog on. Stan Collymore didn’t do much for Liverpool, but his 92nd-minute winner (above) that night gave the Premier League a memory for life. It won’t get old. Qualifying for the Champions League via the Premier League in 2017 was a nightmare. Liverpool, who finished fourth, ran at 1.97 points per game. Arsenal came fifth and missed out with a total of 75. Five places rather than four are up for grabs again this season, and as it stands, Liverpool are on course to bag the last of them… with a projected points total of just 60. Conor O’Neill couldn’t help asking: is the standard in 2025-26 just, y’know, a little bit s**t? Or should we be grateful for a competitive division? Part of me reckons both things are true. The Premier League isn’t loaded with outstanding teams at the top. We’ve seen far better versions of Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea over the past decade, and we’ve witnessed wilder title races too. But it’s now April, and there’s a hell of a lot still up for grabs. Just about everything, in fact. And if there’s one thing 2025-26 has brought us — something the league was crying out for — it’s a full-on relegation scrap. With seven games left, West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest and Leeds United could all still go with surely doomed pair Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers; the levels of chaos God intended. Selected games (times ET/UK, all 3pm/8pm) Europa League quarter-final first legs: Bologna vs Aston Villa — Paramount+, ViX/TNT Sports; Freiburg vs Celta Vigo — Paramount+, DAZN, ViX/TNT Sports; Porto vs Nottingham Forest — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo, ViX/TNT Sports. UEFA Conference League quarter-final first legs: Crystal Palace vs Fiorentina; Mainz vs Strasbourg — both Paramount+, VIX/TNT Sports. A friend of mine got in touch to suggest that for ‘And Finally…’ today, we rewind to Tuesday and give some love to a rather breathtaking pass from Sporting CP’s Ousmane Diomande against Arsenal in their Champions League quarter-final first leg. A bit like Lamine Yamal’s brilliant ‘trivela’ pass for Barcelona over the weekend, it didn’t lead to a goal — Maxi Araujo drove a raking shot against the crossbar — but the curve on Diomande’s ball (above) and the precision of his placement does kind of catch you in a mesmerising loop. Not half bad for a centre-back. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Phil grew up near Edinburgh in Scotland and joined The Athletic in 2019 as its Leeds United writer. He is now lead writer of The Athletic FC newsletter. He previously worked for the Yorkshire Evening Post as its chief football writer. Follow Phil on Twitter @PhilHay_