Liverpool’s Georginio Wijnaldum has begrudgingly congratulated Jetro Willems after the Newcastle United left-back scored his first goal in English football at Anfield on Saturday.
Willems scored a superb goal to hand the Magpies a shock lead in the first half but a brace by Sadio Mane and a strike by Mohamed Salah were enough for the Reds to come from behind and grab all three points.
Wijnaldum has played alongside Willems for the Dutch national team and the two players clearly get on with each other as the Liverpool midfielder replied to Willems’ latest Instagram post by joking that he’d rather score that goal in a different match.
“Couldn’t you choose another game to do this nonsense? Sick goal man,” said Wijnaldum in Dutch in the comments.
OPINION
Willems stunned football fans with his goal in the first half at Anfield. He showed great composure and touch to get the ball out of his feet and blast a shot at goal past Adrian, leaving full-back Trent Alexander-Arnold no hope of making a block. Unfortunately for Newcastle, their lead did not last that long and if anything, served as more of a catalyst for Liverpool to push forward and make things happen. Willems will no doubt be happy with that goal though, on a personal level. He hardly had the best start to life in the Premier League when his debut against Arsenal saw him not knowing where to play before being involved in losing the ball for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to score the winning goal. He then appeared to dive against Leicester in the Carabao Cup in a bid to win a penalty. Willems will have to start as the left-sided wing-back for quite a while with Matt Ritchie injured. This goal at Liverpool should be a major boost to his confidence.
