Why Luís Diaz is the new Diogo Jota

Luís Diaz played in an unfamiliar centre forward position against Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League. He scored a hat-trick from the Diogo Jota zone.

Liverpool maintained their perfect start to the 2024/25 Champions League by beating Bayer Leverkusen 4-0 at Anfield. If the outcome wouldn’t have shocked you after watching the first hour of the match, the final score line certainly would have.

At that point, the Reds had mustered just shy of one expected goal, taking 13 shots to do so. With two reasonable chances in the preceding five minutes, one of which was of sufficient quality to be deemed ‘big’ by Opta, the pressure was at least starting to build.

The game needed to burst open though. The surgeon was Curtis Jones, the scalpel his sublime through ball to set up Luis Díaz for the opening goal. With Diogo Jota injured and Darwin Núñez rested, Arne Slot made the surprise decision to start the Colombian as his centre forward. The move paid off perfectly.

In the half hour or so from Jones’ pass through to full time, Liverpool amassed 3.2 expected goals. Leverkusen had logged 312 games in the FBRef database prior to this, with that xG tally equalling the most they had conceded in an entire match. Only three times under Xabi Alonso had they faced more than 2.0, this level of quickfire attacking onslaught simply does not happen to his side.

The first goal inevitably meant that Leverkusen had to open up, which obviously helped. The move leading to the Reds’ first Opta-defined big chance of the match - which Mohamed Salah sliced wide following a pass from Ryan Gravenberch - required a lengthy build-up of 25 actions. The team average for the season for this obscure metric was 8.8 at that point. Yet none of the final four golden opportunities Liverpool fashioned needed more than six actions in the sequence. They were quicker, sharper and all converted too.

Díaz maintained his unerring ability to put big chances away this term. He, Jota and Salah have all had 11 (excluding penalties) in 2024/25, with Lucho having scored eight (72.7 per cent) while the other pair are on four goals apiece. Maybe this white-hot success rate can’t last for the Reds’ number seven, but the Jota-esque nature of his performance against Leverkusen suggests perhaps it can.