Cardozo hits 10-man Liverpool

Benfica 2 Liverpool 1

Whether it is called the Stadium of Light or the Estadio da Luz; whether it is by the Wear or the Tagus, it is a venue that this season Liverpool have left with bleeding, self-inflicted wounds.

At Sunderland, Liverpool were undone by a beach ball thrown on to the pitch by one of their own supporters that deflected Marcus Bent's shot past Pepe Reina. In Lisbon, a combination of Ryan Babel's naivety in engineering his own dismissal and two penalties, cheaply given away, contributed to a defeat that will take some repairing. Benfica know how good they are. Memories of their annihilation of Everton still lingered among the futuristic sweep of the girders and they have dropped a bare two points here in the Portuguese league all season.

However, until Babel marched towards the Benfica captain, Luisao, and twice put his hand over the Brazilian's mouth in an attempt to shut him up, this was a game that had not followed the Portuguese script.

Before every match here, the club's mascot, an eagle called Vitoria, swoops royally down to land on a podium by the touchline. Last night, however, she missed her landing spot and finished up, hopping about somewhat shamefaced, on the pitch. For 30 minutes it was to prove something of an omen.

Soon, there were further reasons for embarrassment as Daniel Agger side-footed the kind of cheeky free-kick Liverpool would have honed on the training pitches at Melwood – rolled by Steven Gerrard across the area to where the Dane was lurking while the Benfica wall waited for a high, powerfully-struck shot.

And then the game exploded. Rafael Benitez had suggested before kick-off that Benfica were not the kind of club to attempt to rile Fernando Torres into a yellow card that would ensure he missed the second leg. This is precisely what they did and, when Luisao's tackle came clattering in, the men around Torres reacted.

Luisao and Babel exchanged insults but as the Brazilian advanced towards him, Babel raised his hand and twice put it over his opponent's mouth directly in front of the referee. If it was a joke, it was a foolish one that carried huge consequences.

His manager thought it ridiculous that a gesture had been punished more than a venomous tackle. "A tackle from behind is more serious than a gesture," Benitez said. "Then you had Luisao shouting at the referee – and he isn't deaf. It is hard to understand and impossible to change." Since Emiliano Insua will be suspended and Fabio Aurelio unavailable for the return at Anfield, Angel di Maria may fancy his chances against whoever Benitez can find to play left-back.

There have been times when Babel's contribution to Liverpool has been so insipid that his dismissal would have provoked the reaction that came from the American writer, Dorothy Parker, when told that President Calvin Coolidge was dead. "How can they tell?"

But from the moment he left the pitch, the impact showed as minute by minute and yard by yard Liverpool were pushed back. One of the first, heavily-accented words of English Benitez learnt to use when he came to Liverpool was "character" and as the flares and firecrackers exploded on to the pitch, threatening the continuation of the game, his players required every fibre of it.

Torres, who maintained a guerilla war on his own up front, showed the full range of his ability but a breakthrough had been coming long before it arrived with an hour almost up.

Seconds after Oscar Cardozo smashed his shot against the foot of Reina's post, the ball was played back in; Pablo Aimar, Benitez's one-time player at Valencia, had his shirt pulled by Insua and Cardozo smashed the spot-kick into the corner of the net.

As the smoke from the flares cleared across the pitch, Liverpool knew they would have to endure a long and bitter siege. Moments later, Benfica should have had another penalty when Jamie Carragher's studs finished in Cardozo's chest. It was, however, Carragher's hands, thrown up as he slid to stop Di Maria's cross, that betrayed him. The additional assistant referee spotted the handball and Cardozo's second penalty, taken very differently from his first, had the same result.

Benfica (4-1-3-1-1): Julio Cesar; Pereira (Nuno Gomes, 66), Luisao, Luiz, Coentrao; Garcia; Ramires, Martins (Amorim, 72), Di Maria; Aimar (Airton, 86); Cardozo. Substitutes not used: Moreira (gk), Menezes, Sidnei, Kardec.

Liverpool (4-2-3-1): Reina; Johnson, Agger, Carragher, Insua; Lucas, Mascherano; Kuyt, Gerrard (Benayoun, 90), Babel; Torres (Ngog, 82). Substitutes not used: Cavalieri (gk), Kyrgiakos, Plessis, El Zhar, Pacheco.

Referee: J Eriksson (Sweden).