At that moment, the blue stands of Goodison Park underwent a transformation that only a derby crowd can manage by shifting in the span of a single breath from a collective gasp of dread into a thundering, wall-shaking roar that seemed to compress the very air inside the ground.
Everton fans rose to their feet in waves, a rolling surge of blue that moved from the lower tiers like a current finding its level. Scarves were brandished in the air and the chant that rose from forty thousand throats was stripped of all rhymes, reduced to pure urgent command:
"Defend! Hold the line!"
The noise crashed over the pitch like a tide, rhythmic and relentless, as though the crowd genuinely believed their voices alone could reinforce the back line, could shore it up the way sandbags shore up a flooded river bank.
Beneath the brooding, ash-grey sky, the Everton fans showed not a single sign of being broken by Julien's thunderous long-range effort moments earlier.
If anything, something in the atmosphere had hardened. Every shout carried an edge of people who refused, absolutely refused, to be put away. The challenge of that near-miss had not deflated them. It had, if anything, made them angrier, more determined to fill every corner of the ground with noise until their team found its footing.
On the touchline, Martínez turned sharply toward the pitch, his expression was electric with urgency. He waved both arms in broad, furious arcs, his voice was cutting through even the ruckus around him.
"Mark De Rocca!" The words came out in a hard-edge with command. "Don't give him any room to shoot!" He paused just long enough for the instruction to register, then added the tactical follow-through: "Double up—don't let him receive the ball in space!"
His hands moved as he spoke, carving shapes in the air, two palms pressing in, signaling his midfielders to compress the lines, to close the channels, to jumble Julien's runs in behind and suffocate his attempts from distance before they could even begin.
He had done his homework in the days leading up to this match. He knew exactly what Julien could do with a yard of space and a clean strike. He intended to ensure that yard was never offered.
The whistle blew.
Everton's defensive shape tightened like a closing fist.
Barry and McCarthy fell into step on sides of Julien almost immediately, shadowing him with close suffocating attention: not watching the ball, watching him, terrified of the moment he might explode into that devastating first stride.
The pressing intensity across the whole side ratcheted up.
And this, Klopp knew, watching from his technical area with suppressed satisfaction, was precisely what he had hoped to provoke. He loved this pace. He loved this chaos of transition because chaos meant space, and space was where his best players lived.
At sixteenth Minute, Liverpool won the ball in midfield. Kanté stripped it cleanly and slipped a compact, plain pass to Gerrard, who took one short, steadying touch.
An Everton player bore down on him at speed.
Gerrard didn't look up to assess options. He didn't play it wide to safety. He didn't play it back to reset. He lifted his right foot and sent a crisp, direct ball forward aimed straight into the channel where Julien was already running.
Julien received it with his back to Barry, shoulders slightly dropped as though he had already sensed the ball's arrival before it came, and was simply waiting for the moment to align.
The instant it reached his feet, he did not control it. There was no broad first touch to kill pace, no moment of settling and surveying. Instead, his right ankle brushed the ball with the most delicate of redirections, easing it fractionally behind him and in the same seamless instant, his upper body snapped left, his core was winding and unwinding in a single explosive rotation that turned him completely around.
He was gone.
Barry still had his hand outstretched, fingers spread, eyes fixed on the space where Julien's back had been a half-second earlier.
By the time the signals from his eyes had reached his feet and told them to change direction, Julien had completed the full turn and was already level with him, in full stride, the gap between them was opening rather than closing.
Barry lunged in the desperate, instinctive grab and found nothing but air. He scrambled after him, his rhythm was shattered, legs were out of sequence as a result the gap between them was widening with every step.
McCarthy had read the danger from the flank. He came across at a sharp diagonal angle, calculating the trajectory that would pin Julien against the touchline to use Barry's pursuit from behind as the anvil and himself as the hammer, compressing Julien's options down to nothing.
Julien caught McCarthy in the very corner of his eye. He didn't break stride by a single fraction.
When McCarthy was nearly upon him, close enough that the tackle was committed, the weight already shifting—Julien planted his left foot on the ball and leaned fractionally left. It was a lean, not a movement.
A suggestion of direction.
But it was enough, because it was precisely calculated to be enough, timed to the moment when McCarthy's body could no longer course-correct without falling.
McCarthy bit, his weight was transferring to close the gap on the left. And in that same instant, Julien pulled the ball back right with a clean cut, simultaneously drawing in his hips to create the sliver of space needed to slip the recovery challenge from Barry who arrived a beat too late.
He had threaded the needle between both of them simultaneously.
Whoosh.
The crowd reacted as one not in celebration, but in a disbelieving, instinctive cry that swept across the Everton sections like a wave moving back, as sound of people who had braced for a tackle and found themselves watching magic instead.
How had he known Barry was coming from behind?
How had he read McCarthy's weight shift before McCarthy himself had made it?
They had all known, of course, how gifted Liverpool's Julien De Rocca was. They had read the reports. They had seen the highlights, watched the compiled clips on their phones before the match, discussed his goal tally over breakfast.
But reading about a thing and witnessing it, live, from thirty rows back, with the smell of the crowd and the cold air on your face that was an entirely different category of experience.
Highlights flatten everything. They remove the pressure and the noise and the context and the sheer speed of professional football, the speed at which decisions must be made and bodies must respond.
Seeing it in person was, as it always is, something else.
On the pitch, Barry and McCarthy clattered into each other's shoulders as their trajectories had converged on a point that was no longer occupied. Both stumbled for a step briefly before they steadied.
By the time they had gathered themselves to give chase, Julien was already in full flight with a wide corridor of green space opening up in front of him outside the penalty area with no red shirt anywhere nearby to offer support.
The Everton stands rose again. The noise turned high and urgent now in a different quality from the earlier roar, it was less defiant and more anxious, watching the threat develop in real time and looking powerless to intervene.
Julien glanced up at goal. Then he swung his right foot back with every inch of his body language broadcasting the same message to every defender, every goalkeeper, every fam in the ground: shot.
Everton center-back Distin, who had been stationed on Suárez in the box, read the body language and came charging out, pledging his weight to narrow the angle, to get his body in the line of fire if nothing else.
In goal, Howard shuffled forward two careful paces, weight low and collected, hands spread wide at his sides, eyes locked on Julien's right foot with the absolute, tunnel-visioned concentration preparing to react in less than half a second.
He was ready to spring. He had anticipated the angle, the pace, the likely corner. He was as prepared as it was possible to be.
And then Julien pulled the trigger back.
There was no shot. Instead: a sharp, sudden cut to the left, the ball was redirected, the foot retracted, the entire telegraphed promise of power was snatched away at the last conceivable moment.
The dummy was too sudden, too perfectly timed.
Distin couldn't stop himself. His momentum, the momentum he had built while charging out to block carried him forward through the space where the shot was supposed to be, his legs were cycling uselessly beneath him as he scrambled to find his balance, watching just understanding that he had been completely deceived.
Howard, who had already committed his weight forward onto his front foot in preparation for the dive, tried to redistribute himself, to find his feet again.
There wasn't time.
The preparation that had been his strength was now his vulnerability: a goalkeeper fully set to spring in one direction is, for that one frozen instant, unable to spring in any other.
Julien had gone past them both.
He didn't carry the ball any further. He didn't take another touch to improve his angle or assert his dominance over the situation.
With every pair of eyes in Goodison Park, every fan, every player, every camera on him and waiting for what he would do with this opening, he played it first-time: a low pass that rolled into Suárez's path, placed so precisely that he did not need to adjust a single step to meet it.
Suárez met it on the half-volley without hesitation. He didn't take a touch. He didn't look up. He simply hammered it low toward the bottom-left corner, his technique was powered and absolute.
Howard had no chance.
Jagielka, the other Everton center-back, watched the ball fly past him into the net. He had been a bystander. There was nothing to be done, and he knew it, and that knowledge showed in his face.
The referee pointed to the center circle.
Goal given.
1–0.
Liverpool leading away from home.
The blue noise at Goodison Park was halved in an instant cut off as cleanly as a switch thrown, the constant roar was collapsing into stunned, fractured silence.
In that silence, scattered pockets of red exploded into life: away supporters were jumping, scarves were wheeling above in tight, furious circles, fists were hammering the safety railings until they rang, a few of them were even turning toward the adjacent Everton sections with gestures that required no translation in any language.
Julien jogged back toward Suárez. He wrapped both arms around him, and Suárez thumped his back hard, twice. Suárez leaned close to Julien's ear as Gerrard and the others piled in around them, his voice was swallowed by the celebrating bodies.
The Everton players were shaking their heads.
Distin stood with both hands planted on his hips, staring at the ground directly in front of his boots in the posture of helplessness.
Barry and McCarthy had not moved far from where they had been beaten. They were still catching their breath, both wearing the same expression, the look of men who had done everything technically correct and still found themselves watching someone jog away from them untouched.
Barry ran a hand across the back of his neck.
McCarthy stared at the space in front of him.
In his goal, Howard crouched down on the line and patted the turf once with his palm. Then he shook his head slowly, and rose to his feet.
Martínez stood on the touchline with both hands pressed flat to his temples, motionless for several seconds, his eyes were tracking the replaying sequence in his mind.
Then the moment passed. His hands dropped. He was already calling out to his players, his voice was returning its authority, directing them back into position.
Klopp, by contrast, pumped his fist with the compressed force that had been building since kick-off and had finally been released. He turned to slap his assistant on the palm and the grin on his face was wide and entirely genuine.
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