A battling Roma side inflicted Liverpool's first Champions League defeat of the season on Wednesday night, but it wasn't enough to prevent Liverpool from progressing to the final on aggregate.
Liverpool went into the game knowing that barring a collapse of epic proportions, it was they that would be competing with Real Madrid for the title of Europe’s best in Kiev.
And so it proved, with a 4-2 defeat on the night enough for the 'Reds' to advance 7-6 on aggregate, but the Italians deserve credit for dragging the fight out until the very end.
The hosts came out swinging from the off, but were undone on nine minutes by an individual error. Radja Nainggolan played a pass without looking and surrendered possession to Roberto Firmino, with the Brazilian driving forward and feeding Sadio Mane on the overlap to slot beyond Alisson and open the scoring.
The home side continued to pile forward, with Cengiz Under's prodded effort kept out by Karius, before Roma once again should have been awarded a spot kick, this time for a handball against Alexander-Arnold.
However, Liverpool did well to have a 10-minute spell of their own with 20 minutes to go, which proved key as Roma ran out of time to complete their comeback.
Dzeko was again denied by Karius as the game moved into its final 10 minutes and whilst Nainggolan made amends for his earlier mistake by fizzing a low effort in off the post from range on 86 minutes, Roma always looked short on time.
That proved to be the case, though the home side were finally awarded a penalty in added-on time, though it looked to be a harsh decision on this occasion as substitute Ragnar Klavan adjudged to have handled in the box. Nainggolan did the honours from the spot, but that was the last action of the game as Roma fell one goal short of the miraculous.
The full-time whilst sparked jubilation from the Liverpool players and fans as they booked a showdown with Real Madrid in Kiev on May 26th.