Micah Richards felt ‘disappointed’ by one player in particular during a ‘flat’ Liverpool performance in the Carabao Cup final on Sunday.
On a day when most of the Reds’ starting XI didn’t play anywhere close to their best, Newcastle took full advantage to secure their first major domestic silverware since 1955, triggering scenes of euphoria among their fans at Wembley.
It felt as though Arne Slot’s side were still suffering a hangover from their Champions League exit at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain earlier in the week, and Magpies assistant boss Jason Tindall admitted afterwards that it may have worked in his team’s favour.
Richards ‘disappointed’ with Luis Diaz at Wembley
Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast as he reviewed the Carabao Cup final on Sunday night, Richards was underwhelmed by the performance of Liverpool’s number 7, and indeed the team as a whole.
The pundit reflected: “I was disappointed with Luis Diaz today. I know he’s been through a lot with his father getting kidnapped and all that sort of thing, but when I have seen him before, he has been electric, he has been up and down the wing.
“I’m not picking Diaz out at all but I just think on a big pitch like Wembley where, at times there was space to exploit them gaps, I wanted to see a bit more. This team, at times, is so reliant on Mo Salah and are expecting a worldie from him.
“From Liverpool’s point of view, the performance was a little bit flat. Maybe it was psychologically from the PSG result but I wanted to see a little bit more.”
Diaz was nowhere near his best at Wembley as barren streak continues
With so many of Liverpool’s players failing to perform, it’d be wrong to lay a huge chunk of the blame on any one individual, as collectively the Reds just froze on the big occasion.
However, Diaz was one of those who’ll feel that he could’ve done much more at Wembley, and a 4/10 rating from the Liverpool Echo‘s Ian Doyle – who wrote that the Colombian ‘lacked quality at key moments’ – was indicative of a subdued outing from the 28-year-old.
As per Sofascore, our number 7 completed just 19 passes and failed to have a single shot in 74 minutes on the pitch, while he also lost six of his 10 duels. He’s now scored just once in 18 appearances for LFC in 2025, a far cry from hitting five goals in as many Premier League games at the start of this season (Transfermarkt).
Fabrizio Romano has said over the past 24 hours that there’s a ‘concrete possibility’ that Diaz could leave Liverpool this summer amid interest from the Saudi Pro League, with Barcelona also admirers of the former Porto winger.
We certainly wouldn’t be shoving Lucho unceremoniously out the door any time soon, but he’s definitely capable of far better than what he showed yesterday, and indeed for most of the calendar year so far. Hopefully he can finish the campaign in the same prolific fashion in which he started it.
