It was a banner day – such is the experience of watching this season’s Liverpool squad – on Saturday as the Reds dispatched Fulham in a straight-forward 2-nil win at Anfield. The headlines, correctly, singled out young winger Rio Ngumoha, who scored the opener with a dazzling curler and also got the hockey assist for Mohamed Salah’s goal a few minutes later. And for all of that – as well as a generally impressive, lively outing – Liverpool’s brightest young player took home the Player of the Match
award.
The performance was relatively easy to lift up as being the most important on the day because it ticked the boxes: the output matched what our eyes saw. Rio’s style of play is quite aesthetically pleasing. Not just in that he seems to really move his opponents well whenever he’s out there, but that he doesn’t shrink and remains quite confident throughout a shift.
So, it is no surprise that the player would end up being the talk of the town. Arne Slot was asked about him during the post-match presser and offered up a lengthy set of praise for the rising star:
“[Rio] has such a special quality which you don’t see a lot in football anymore: dominating the one-v-one situation. And that’s exactly what he did when he scored his goal, making the ball free by twisting and turning and then hitting it in like a Mo Salah finish, I would say. It’s something I’m not surprised to see because in training sessions during the last month we saw more and more that he got more and more power to hit the ball as powerful as he did today. And yeah, that’s why he had now three starts in the last seven or eight games, I think. I don’t know exactly, but Wolves and Tottenham and this one. Pleasing to see that he did what we know makes him special, that’s dominating one-v-one situations.”
It wasn’t just the take-ons and the bursts of speed that caught the eye, but what I saw in this match was him getting more involved and spending more time on the ball. And while I wouldn’t yet say he’s got the kind of strength that Salah or Sadio had in order to become successful wingers in the Premier League, he did show me an ability to hold defenders off which seemed a new tool that’s been unlocked.
The future is bright for Rio Ngumoha and we saw a lot of good in that performance. Here’s hoping he manages to press on and maintain the effort. Because what sets stars apart from the rest of the field is the ability to turn in these kinds of performances all the time.
