Arne Slot signalled that 17-year-old Rio Ngumoha could be handed a start against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday after a decisive showing in Liverpool\u2019s 2\u20130 victory over Fulham. The performance helped ease the pressure that followed a meek 2\u20130 defeat to PSG in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
Slot reshaped his attack for the Anfield match, bringing back a back four and reinstating Mohamed Salah. Ngumoha made only his second Premier League start and proved an immediate influence down the left. He opened the scoring with his first Anfield goal and, along with Salah\u2019s contribution, helped the Reds to a win that improved their chances of securing a top-five finish.<\/p>\n
There remain imperfections for Slot to address ahead of the return leg against the European champions. Still, Liverpool displayed greater forward verve, largely driven by Ngumoha\u2019s one-v-one threat and direct impact on the flank.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has such a special quality which you don\u2019t see a lot in football anymore: dominating the one-v-one situation,\u201d the self-proclaimed soccer romantic commented post-match. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what he did when he scored his goal, making the ball free by twisting and turning and then hitting it in like a Mo Salah finish, I would say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019m not surprised to see because in training sessions during the last month, we saw more and more that he got more and more power to hit the ball as powerfully as he did today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ngumoha first announced himself on Matchday 2 of the 2025\u201326 Premier League season with a dramatic late winner at St. James\u2019 Park. Slot has not yet offered the teenager a sustained run in the side, but Liverpool\u2019s recent attacking malaise has made it increasingly difficult to overlook him. With a Champions League tie to come, Ngumoha\u2019s involvement now looks set to be one of Slot\u2019s key selections for the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ngumoha\u2019s Anfield strike and full performance may earn him a start vs Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11563,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1446,299,1577],"class_list":["post-11564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-academy","tag-arne-slot","tag-teenager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}