Vinicius is the most decisive player in the world, says Ancelotti

Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr is peerless when it comes to inflicting damage on opponents, his manager Carlo Ancelotti said after the Brazilian scored twice in a spectacular 5-2 comeback win at Liverpool on Tuesday.Liverpool had raced into a 2-0 lead at Anfield, but a double from Vinicius levelled the match before the break and laid the foundation for a thumping Champions League, last-16 first leg win. "Vinicius is the most decisive player in world football today,” Ancelotti told a news conference. "There is no player with this continuity of action. He doesn’t stop and keeps going. I hope he can continue like this.”Vinicius has become arguably his team’s most important player after crowning his breakout season by scoring the goal that won Real Madrid a record-extending 14th European Cup title with a 1-0 win over Liverpool last year. He is the player with most goal attempts (28) and shots on target (15) in the Champions League this season and is the most fouled player in Europe’s top five leagues (82). Vinicius scored twice in three attempts against Liverpool on Tuesday and — at only 22 — is already the second highest scorer against the English team in the Champions League with five goals, one behind Karim Benzema, and ahead of Didier Drogba (four) and Frank Lampard (three).After Liverpool went 2-0 ahead, Vinicius hit back with a sublime strike and doubled his tally with a fluke second after Liverpool keeper Alisson hit the ball straight at him. "Vinicius was brilliant as always,” Ancelotti said. "It was an historic win, mostly because if you consider where we played and how we started the game, falling two goals behind. But we never backed down and kept our cool, not panicked and we turned around a very difficult game.”After scoring 22 goals with 20 assists last season, Vinicius has already scored 18 in all competitions this campaign and was named player of the tournament at the Club World Cup in January, helping Real to secure a record-extending fifth title.Meanwhile, Virgil van Dijk admits Liverpool face an "almost impossible” task to keep their Champions League hopes alive after a hammering against Real Madrid."We have almost an impossible job in Madrid in three weeks’ time, but when the time is right, we’ll focus and we’ll give everything to represent the club as good as we can,” said defender Van Dijk. "The only thing we can do is watch it, learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen in the next game we play, which is Crystal Palace (on Saturday). It sounds pretty easy but it isn’t — that’s the hard reality. If you look back in the last two games, we played well (beating Everton and Newcastle) and that’s something we should focus on as well and don’t be in a panic.”Liverpool made a dream start on Tuesday, with Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah putting the home side 2-0 up within a quarter of an hour as Klopp’s side sought revenge for their defeat by Real in last season’s final in Paris. But Vinicius scored twice to make it 2-2 at half-time and Klopp’s men collapsed after the break. Eder Militao put the visitors ahead and two goals from Karim Benzema made it a rout."They have quality players all over the team, they can punish you and punish mistakes that you make and that’s what they did, especially in the second half,” said Netherlands captain Van Dijk. "It’s pretty clear to see (we made) mistakes that we shouldn’t make but it happens in football. We’re not robots.”The punishing defeat compounds a miserable season for Liverpool, who are out of both domestic cup competitions and are languishing in eighth place in the Premier League. They have now conceded three or more goals eight times this season and their defensive problems were not helped by a potential injury to Joe Gomez, who was withdrawn as a precaution.But they are only seven points behind fourth-placed Tottenham in the Premier League, with two matches in hand, and have 16 games remaining to salvage their season by qualifying for next season’s Champions League.Van Dijk said the only way out of Liverpool’s crisis was to "stick together”. "Everyone is angry, everyone is obviously disappointed but the next game is in four days (at Palace), so if we want to perform there we have to quickly change the switch,” he said.