Liverpool’s Carabao Cup final victory over Chelsea will be remembered for a number of things.
It’ll be remembered for an epic penalty shootout, Caomihin Kelleher scoring the winner and Luis Diaz having a stormer despite only arriving at Liverpool a month earlier.
However, it’ll also be known for Fabinho’s audacious penalty during the shootout.
Despite the pressure of the situation, the Reds midfielder was the coolest player at Wembley as he clipped his effort down the centre of the goal, deceiving Kepa Arrizabalaga.
Of course, it’s known as the Panenka and Diaz has revealed this Brazilian teammate had the plan all along.
The former Porto attacker has told Liverpool’s official website that he couldn’t quite believe Fabinho when he was saying that he planned to take his penalty like that, should the final be decided by spot kicks.
He told the club’s official website: “In the days leading up to the final, we were taking penalty kicks and we practised together for sure. He’d been joking around saying, ‘If it goes to penalties, I’m doing a Panenka.’ And I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’
“I was laughing at him, saying, ‘No, you can’t do that! If it goes wrong, the fans take it badly in a final.’ So when the moment came and he’s stepping up, I’m thinking, ‘Blimey, is he going to do this?’ When it came off how it did, it just shows the class and quality of the player that he did it. I was kind of shocked and surprised in a good way how it came about.”
Fabinho, a £39 million signing in 2018, certainly showed a lot of cojones to execute the penalty the way that he did against Chelsea.
Okay so it’s hardly akin to Zinedine Zidane doing it in a World Cup final, but it was the final of a major competition nonetheless, against a famous rival.
The former Monaco midfielder is a no-nonsense, powerhouse midfielder but, being Brazilian, he also has a hell of a lot of football ability too and that moment against Kepa proved as much.
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