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LONDON — It was the only fair way for Sunday’s mad EFL Cup final to end. Kepa Arrizabalaga completely misjudging the arc of his shot at redemption, another Chelsea penalty shootout in which he was the chief protagonist ending with a runners-up medal.
Three years before, he had refused to come off the pitch as Maurizio Sarri pleaded with him to make way for Willy Caballero. Now, he loomed over the contest for a different reason. Thomas Tuchel had hinted that the Spaniard, who had saved four penalties already this season — and in the process helped get Chelsea to Wembley — could be called upon for the shootout.
There he sat in the second half of extra time, Chekhov’s fifth substitute. An League Cup final this dramatic could not end without Kepa’s narrative value being fully exploited.
That it was as he ended a streak of 21 converted penalties, blazing high into the Liverpool supporters. Their flares were lit almost as soon as the ball had left Kepa’s boot. This time they had not acted in undue haste.
For a time, this magnificent game seemed like it might never end. The flares had first erupted in the 67th minute after Joel Matip had converted an expertly taken free-kick routine from the right flank, Sadio Mane peeling off to the back post to flick a Trent Alexander-Arnold delivery into the mixer. The jubilation was swiftly cut short as Stuart Attwell was instructed to check the VAR monitor, where he concluded that Virgil van Dijk’s blocking of Reece James had been too robust.
Chelsea might have been thanking VAR at that moment. By the final whistle, they would be cursing its intervention. Twice Kai Havertz thought he had once again come up trumps for Tuchel in a final. Between then, substitute Romelu Lukaku found himself adjudged offside by a fraction of an armpit, one of his best finishes since returning to the Premier League scrubbed from the history books.
Those ghost goals did not…
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Source : cbssports
