Plymouth Argyle’s Callum Wright is carried by Matthew Sorinola as they celebrate after the English FA Cup fourth round soccer match between Plymouth Argyle and Liverpool at Home Park stadium in Plymouth, England, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
Premier League leader Liverpool was knocked out of the FA Cup by second-tier struggler Plymouth after losing 1-0 in a stunning fourth-round upset on Sunday.
It ended any hopes of a quadruple of major trophies for Liverpool, which leads the Premier League by six points with a game in hand, finished top of the revamped first stage of the Champions League and has reached the English League Cup final.
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Ryan Hardie’s 53rd-minute penalty proved to be the winner for Plymouth, a club from the southwest of England which is in last place in the second-tier Championship and recently fired Wayne Rooney as its manager.
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“We all came here today with a dream,” Hardie said, “and we have done it.”
Liverpool fielded a heavily rotated lineup, without stars like Mohamed Salah, Cody Gakpo and Virgil van Dijk who weren’t even on the bench, but still had established internationals like Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota on the field in a frenetic ending to the game as Plymouth was forced to defend doggedly.
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At the end of a nerve-shredding nine minutes of stoppage time, Plymouth goalkeeper Conor Hazard produced a stunning save to tip over a header from Nunez and then was in the right place to keep out another header — this time from Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher after he came up for a corner.
In the end, the crucial moment was when Harvey Elliott raised his hands to stop the ball going into the penalty area and the referee awarded a handball. Hardie composed himself and slotted his spot kick the opposite direction to where Kelleher dived.
“They were great today and made it really, really hard for us and we couldn’t cope with that,” Elliott said. “It’s a learning curve. It’s a different game for us because we’re not used to playing these kind of games.”
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Liverpool manager Arne Slot congratulated Plymouth and acknowledged his team “hardly created anything at all.”
“Probably our best part of the game was the last 10 minutes, so that tells you we kept on fighting,” Slot said. “But credit to them — good game plan and they worked incredibly hard.”
Plymouth became the first club from outside the Premier League to beat a team that is leading the top flight since Wigan eliminated Manchester City in February 2018, statistic supplier Opta said of the FA Cup.
There were great scenes at the final whistle as Plymouth players hugged each other on the field and fans did the same in the stands at Home Park.
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Liverpool is an eight-time winner of the FA Cup, most recently in 2022.
