LADS VS LIVERPOOL

ALS sent Ben Hardie to the US to think, drink and watch football. Here’s his first report…

Sunderland travelled to Nashville for the first of three games in the United States, losing 4-2 to Liverpool at Geodis Park. Liverpool began the game with a mixture of first team and academy players but had seven starters who played at least semi-regularly in senior football last term. We began with a lineup as strong as we could have gone, with a number of players either absent or yet to join the squad for the tour due to their countries progress in the latest World Cup. The bench was entirely academy personnel and/or players who went out on loan last season, with the exception of Simon Moore.

Despite it supposedly being at a neutral venue, You’ll Never Walk Alone was blasted out of the speakers as the two teams walked onto the pitch and Sunderland fans were vastly outnumbered inside the just over 30,000 capacity home of MLS outfit Nashville. It was little surprise then when The Reds took the lead inside 15 minutes via 19-year-old Northern Ireland international attacker Kieran Morrison. It wasn’t our finest moment defensively, with the opposition just running straight at us before scoring.

Curiously, Dan Ballard was booked on 20 minutes for bringing down a player who was likely away had he not been fouled. However, this became a stranger decision as the match went on as several similar incidents occurred from both teams afterwards and no cards were brandished. Enzo Le Fee did fantastically not long after to equalise, striking from outside of the box to make it 1-1. Chris Rigg was credited with the assist, showing good tenacity to win the ball back and lay it off to Enzo. Le Fee has been our brightest player so far of pre-season. That was the last major action of the first half.

During the break, we made 10 changes, everybody other than Melker Ellborg went off (and Ellborg lasted another 20 minutes or so before being replaced by Moore himself) so it was pretty much our under-21 team for the concluding 45. They still had a few first team players to call upon though, notably Dominik Szoboszlai, so it’s not a surprise with how the score finished. Despite that though, we did briefly take the lead through Timur Tutierov. That was his second in two matches, if he keeps this us he’ll surely be in the Europa League squad. 

Following on from this, the gap in quality began to show more and Szboszlai, Frederico Chiesa and Lewis Koumas all put the ball in the back of the net to win the game for our fellow Premier League team. You can’t point too much blame at the youngsters but some of the goalkeeping was suspect and Leo Hjelde didn’t cover himself in glory. There were some great bits of defensive work from Trey Samuel-Ogunsuyi and Jenson Jones in particular though. Understandably, we struggled for much going forward aside from one effort being cleared off of the line from a corner.

Overall, it was a good run out for the squad. Hopefully the heat and humidity will help the senior players get fit and playing against a team far better than them (and honestly not doing that badly) certainly won’t do the under-21s too much harm. We can also now tell that Hjelde and Jenson Seelt likely won’t be up to scratch, so hopefully we can look to shift them somewhere where they can play regularly.