It was a night when Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool could savour the release of Champions League football. With their confidence at a low ebb after a grisly run on the domestic front – the form guide showed just three wins for them in 12 matches – they had travelled for the away leg of this last-16 tie under intense pressure. With their Premier League title defence having crumbled, this competition has come to feel like their last shot at glory. How they thrived on the stakes. It was a performance more in keeping with the ones that had made them such feared opposition prior to their shock downturn; the hustle was there and so was the focus and precision. As importantly, the errors that have undermined them of late were not. Those would belong to RB Leipzig. There was a big moment at the start of the second half when Alisson, who had suffered more than any Liverpool player in the previous two games – the league defeats against Manchester City and Leicester – raced off his line to thwart Christopher Nkunku in a one-on-one. It has been Alisson’s kicking that has drawn the unwanted attention and he was a little erratic in that department at Budapest’s Puskas Arena, where the tie had to be played because of coronavirus restrictions. Asked to keep the ball out of his net, he stood tall. It would prove to be a turning point because, within 10 minutes or so, Liverpool had struck twice. Leipzig sit second in the Bundesliga, where they have emerged as the most credible challengers to Bayern Munich and they have built their game on firm defensive foundations. Yet they never looked secure with their high line and desire to take risks and, when they sprinkled in a pair of terrible mistakes, the tie moved away from them. The first came from the midfielder, Marcel Sabitzer, who tried to play a back pass to the last man, Lukas Klostermann, only to get it all wrong. He succeeded in setting Mohamed Salah clean through on goal and the Liverpool striker, who was dangerous all evening, finished with icy calm. The second was even worse to look at, an ungainly tangle from one of the three Leipzig centre-halves, Nordi Mukiele, who got himself lost under a high ball from Curtis Jones and lunged at it in an attempt to retrieve the situation. He missed completely, leaving Sadio Mané with a one-on-one. Again, the outcome was not in doubt. The balance of the tie might have tilted in the 90th minute when the Leipzig substitute, Hwang Hee-chan, was released in behind Jordan Henderson, who again played as a stop-gap centre-half. But Hwang dragged his shot past the far post and it felt as if Leipzig had left themselves with too much to do. Even a 2-1 defeat would have made life hugely difficult for them in the second-leg. Nagelsmann had set up without a recognised centre-forward, rather two floating attacking midfielders in Dani Olmo and Nkunku at the top of a fluid 3-3-2-2 system, in which the wing-backs were encouraged to push on, and Leipzig started with a burst. Liverpool had a let-off when Angeliño crossed for Olmo at the end of a slick move and his header came back off the inside of the post. It was difficult to tell whether Alisson had got his fingertips to it. But Klopp’s team soon settled into a groove and they came to control the first half, their work off the ball matched by a desire to penetrate quickly with it. They could see that passes in behind the Leipzig backline could lead to opportunity. The impressive Trent Alexander-Arnold set Salah away with a throughball on 15 minutes but Peter Gulacsi, the former Liverpool goalkeeper, who never made a senior appearance for the club, was off his line to block the attempted dink. Roberto Firmino blasted into the side-netting on the second phase. That was Liverpool’s best chance before the interval but there were others as Dayot Upamecano, the centre-half who will join Bayern Munich in the summer, displayed a rare kind of looseness. He was not the only one to do so in Leipzig colours. Mané headed high after a Firmino cross under pressure from Mukiele while he almost got on to a clipped Andy Robertson ball over the top; Gulacsi was quickly out of his area to clear. Robertson stepped up to win it back and he sent an audacious 40 yard chip over the backpedalling goalkeeper, which sailed just too high. Firmino also had the ball in the net after Mané had robbed Upamecano to cross from the byline. The assistant referee spotted that it had narrowly gone out of play. Alisson’s save from Nkunku came after Olmo had sprung him around the back of Henderson and, at 2-0, Liverpool survived a few scares, with Angeliño twice shooting wildly. Klopp could feel a rekindling of the optimism.