The UEFA Champions League round of 32 has been decided, and Liverpool were unlucky not to have Sadio Mané's Bayern Munich as their opponents, but the Reds had an equally tough task in having Real Madrid as their first knockout opponents, with whom they have some unfinished business after the 2018 and 2022 finals.
But even before the Merseyside outfit knew their fate in the Champions League, they were first introduced to the institutions fortunate enough to still be able to remain in the competition after successfully progressing from the group stage, with the organisation itself presenting a video showing the sixteen title contenders alongside a star player from their squad, with Liverpool surprisingly not accompanied by Egypt's Mohamed Salah when he was unveiled.
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There was no better way to have presented Liverpool than having the Egyptian international striker as a reference, as he was the leading scorer after scoring on seven occasions over the six matchdays, but it seems that the person in charge of creating the promotion of the teams participating in the round of 16 did not take into account this situation and preferred to put his teammate, Roberto Firmino, also in attack.
Although some of the teams featured in the video did not use their best player during the group stage, it is surprising that at least the current top scorer of the competition was not used, especially when the same player scored the fastest hat-trick of the competition during one of his matches, taking Salah just 6 minutes and 13 seconds to set a new record which previously belonged to Luiz Adriano with 7 minutes and 26 seconds.
Although Roberto Firmino and the Pharaoh are two of Liverpool's most experienced players, it was illogical that the Brazilian should have been the face of his team when his participation in the competition was not the best across six games, with Bobby only featuring in one game against Rangers in Scotland where he scored and assisted on one occasion, falling well short of Salah and his interventions even on the final day against Napoli.
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