Bradley Barcola’s first Liverpool goals came with three different kinds of help. Lewis Koumas reacted inside the penalty area. Florian Wirtz found a pass through the defense. Jeremie Frimpong delivered from the opposite flank. The same player finished every move, but Liverpool kept changing the way it reached him.
The result was Barcola’s first senior hat-trick and a 6-3 Champions League win at LASK. Liverpool’s summer pursuit of Barcola had raised a question beyond the size of the deal: how would another left-sided forward fit the attack? In Linz, his teammates supplied several answers.
Andoni Iraola looked beyond the finishing when he assessed the performance. He praised Barcola’s threat against individual defenders and his runs behind them, then highlighted Wirtz’s work closer to the ball. “Also Flo helped us a lot to control the game, finding the pockets,” the Liverpool head coach said.
Iraola described LASK’s first-half setup as a compact back five. Liverpool needed to find openings without relying solely on winning a dribble. Wirtz could receive between the lines; Barcola could attack beyond them. The passer and the runner had different jobs, and Liverpool benefited from both.
Three connections behind Barcola’s breakthrough
His first goal, in the 24th minute, began with Rio Ngumoha carrying the ball into the box. Koumas gathered the ball after Ngumoha went down under a challenge and supplied Barcola, who finished without taking a settling touch.
For the second, in the 37th minute, Wirtz supplied the opening. Barcola and the German combined, with Wirtz providing the pass for a close-range finish. It was a more controlled route to goal: a short exchange that gave the forward a chance to shoot without having to beat his marker on the ball.
The third, in the 66th minute, stretched the connection across the pitch. Frimpong’s low delivery reached Barcola at the back post. Here, the left-sided forward was the destination for an attack developing on the right, not the player responsible for starting it. His job was to arrive where the cross could find him.
That variety gives Liverpool something to build on. Barcola can threaten with the ball, but an attack that regularly finds him without it makes different demands of defenders. They have to watch his movement while responding to Wirtz’s passing or Frimpong’s width. One productive match doesn’t establish a settled system, but it does show the value of sharing the work.
What Barcola’s hat-trick means for Liverpool
Koumas’s explanation of the evening went beyond the demands of English football. He said the dressing room already knew Barcola’s ability and compared his teammate’s move to another country with the difficulty he’d experienced on loan.
“But moving country and trying to settle in fast is tough,” Koumas said.
The hat-trick was Liverpool’s 13th in the European Cup and Champions League proper, excluding qualifiers, and its first in the competition since Luis Díaz against Bayer Leverkusen in November 2024. For Barcola, a place in that sequence arrived on the same evening as his first Liverpool goal.
Liverpool’s finishing didn’t eliminate the problems at the other end. LASK scored three times, with two goals coming after Koumas had made it 6-1. Iraola explained that resting both starting center backs together was a decision taken with the schedule in mind, while acknowledging the difficulty of introducing a new pairing.
A more connected attack isn’t the same thing as a complete team. Liverpool doesn’t need every evening to produce a Barcola hat-trick. It needs those routes to goal to keep working when the score is close and the space is harder to find.
