LFC v THFC. A few simple letters that state a fact, but a fact so full of feelings and bewilderment. It ought to have been BCL v AJX. It probably ought to have been BCL v MCFC. I see the burgermeisters of UEFA also had both Spanish clubs in opposite sides of the draw for a Barca/Real final.But its not. No, it is not.So here it is. Some of us would have preferred to have taken on Ajax. Some of us will be delighted with Spurs. But whatever happens, all of us are delighted, astonished and ecstatic to be there. These are the days my friends that Liverpool live for.The Barca match is one of the few occasions in my life where the scoreline made sense and yet was completely mad all at the same time. Incredible in both senses of the word. In all senses of the word. Both emotions co-existing simultaneously. It shouldn't have happened but I wasn't surprised. I can't happen but I expected it. It wasn't the Kop, it wasn't the occasion, it wasn't our history, not the ghosts of Davey Fairclough and Vladimir Smicer: it was a 20 year old scally who passed the ball for a laugh from the corner to Origi when no one else was watching and we're 4-0 up. It was Milner playing in every position, Henderson on one leg. Shaqiri probably having his worst first half in a long time.It was a lad from Giffnock who was playing for Hull City 2 years ago rubbing the head of the best player in the world. The GOAT had been shepherded.It was an sub angry at being a sub scoring two goals in the same minutes two of the goals in Istanbul were scored. And so it goes.Fuck Suarez, the chubby Freddie Mercury. We love our own, and if you leave with grace we'll love you more. But shit on our doorstep, take our history and culture and abuse it, use it for your own ends, and we'll call you a cheat. Anyway enough about that other Spanish team, we're off to the other Spanish team's house for a final against Spurs. This makes me nervous. I'd rather be beaten by a team with a long European heritage full of foreigners. I am, of course, aware of the irony. But I'm always always nervous.But whatever, for once we will probably be the favourites. But you know what? Why not? We beat one of the best teams in the world with one of best players in the world to get there. We deserve to be there. So lets fuck 'em. Lets go out and beat them heavily. Enjoy our football.These are the days my friends. These. Are. The Days.
“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” — Albert Einstein (1955).It’s all a question of science, this. Well, who am I to disagree with Albert Einstein...or Jürgen Klopp? Part One: The Past When Jürgen Klopp arrived at Liverpool Football Club in October 2015, one of his first orders of business was to tell the club’s supporters: “We have to change from doubter to believer…now.” We listened, of course: just over three and a half years later and facing into club football’s grandest occasion for the second year in a row, Glatten’s most famous son would surely struggle to find a warm body in a red shirt who is “a little bit too nervous, a little bit too pessimistic, a little bit too much in doubt”. Not a chance.This turn of events has largely been the manager’s own doing, of course, and that of his players, many of whom have arrived during a virtually unprecedented run of success in the transfer market, crafted to a large extent by the club’s Sporting Director, Michael Edwards. It is certainly easier for supporters to believe in the potential of this current Liverpool squad, and the infrastructure around it, than it was with past incarnations.Yet it is also interesting to note that the most striking successes of this team to date have come in Europe, notwithstanding the consistent excellence required to reach 97 points in the league this season which nonetheless yielded only a runners-up spot. Given that Liverpool did not compete in Europe during the 2016/17 campaign, having finished 8th the previous year, Jürgen Klopp has now effectively led his side to 3 European finals in 3 attempts since his arrival, a run only equalled in the history of the club by Bob Paisley (1976—1978). In the process, his team has:– won all 11 of the two-legged ties they have faced under him (12 if you include domestic competitions), including 4 against Bundesliga opposition, 2 each against English, Spanish and Portuguese teams, and 1 Italian side;– gone unbeaten at home in 19 European games on the manager’s watch (and 22 in all), winning 15, drawing 4 and outscoring their opponents 51-13;– made Anfield once again, in Arséne Wenger’s words, “the most hated stadium in Europe” for away sides, a far cry from the relatively benign welcome afforded to Real Madrid in October 2014 in what was, coincidentally or otherwise, Liverpool’s last home defeat in Europe to date;– added several memorable chapters to Liverpool club lore, including knocking Manchester United out of Europe and scoring 3 goals in half an hour to beat Borussia Dortmund 4-3 in 2016; going 5-0, 3-0 and 5-0 up in their respective knockout games in 2018; winning 3-1 in Munich and, most famously of all, coming from 0-3 down on aggregate to beat Barcelona 4-3 in 2019;– achieved all of this while the club remained FFP-compliant and recouped a high percentage of their purchases via player sales, most notably the £142m departure of Philippe Coutinho to the Nou Camp which preceded the signings of Fabinho and Alisson.It seems appropriate that the manager’s most tangible successes at the club to date should have come in Europe, as was the case with Rafa Benítez at the same point of his Liverpool tenure, because this has been familiar territory to the club’s supporters ever since Helenio Herrera’s catenaccio was smashed to pieces on the 4th of May 1965. If the name of the game from day one was turning doubters into believers, then we really could have told Jürgen at the time that all he had to do was deliver European football in the springtime to Anfield, because belief may always be assumed in that time and place. This competition, this terrain, has long since made all of us believers in the miraculous.It is always easier, in the modern history of the club at least, to doubt the prospect of league title success, especially now that Manchester City have changed the rules of engagement. I, like many others, have never seen Liverpool crowned champions of England in my adult life, and my memories of 1987/88 and 1989/90 (when I was 8 and 10 respectively) are 30 years old and formed through the eyes of a child; but give me a pen and a refill pad to write about Liverpool’s adventures in Europe during the same period, and I would damn near fill it. A recollection of post-1984 games against AS Roma alone (2001, 2002 and 2018) would run to many pages.This dichotomy between the two spheres, domestic and international, means that the club’s continuing failure to win a 19th league title feels all the more desperate; at the same time, it makes Liverpool all the more formidable in Europe. On another famous night, 40 years almost to the day after Internazionale were beaten 3-1 by Bill Shankly’s Reds, Chelsea manager José Mourinho was heard to profess that Luis Garcia’s winner “came from the moon, from the Anfield stands”. To some degree, he was right: primarily, it came from the first-time pass of Steven Gerrard, the incisive run of Milan Baros and the quick-thinking of Garcia, but the ghosts of the past were there too, channeling their influence through every man, woman and child in the ground who remembered them. It was a scene replicated against Barcelona earlier this month. The kind of belief that poured forth from the stands as the teams appeared onto the Anfield pitch that night, especially given the 0-3 aggregate score coming in, the quality of the opposition and the absence of key players, is not easily understood in conventional terms. Most Liverpool supporters would have conceded in the hours and days leading up to the game that pride was all that was likely to be at stake, yet by kickoff the noise pouring forth from the stands evoked not only belief, but utter, unfathomable, certainty, no different from any other famous Anfield European night.The only possible explanation is that this club and these supporters have been here before; and that generates a level of innate belief that can be felt on the pitch, no matter the length of the odds facing the team.* * *Back in 2005, an Irish Independent article entitled “Club culture driving force for Liverpool” (with no author named, but I suspect it was Dion Fanning) said the following of Istanbul:Crucially, even during those “lean years”, and during the 1990’s in particular, various Liverpool teams were able to maintain this storied tradition by creating their own little pieces of history which, insignificant as they may seem now, proved to be just enough to keep the embers of European conquest smouldering while the club tried to reinvent itself to keep pace with the modern era.Mark Walters’ late winner to complete a comeback from 0-2 down against Auxerre in 1991 is one example; there were also stirring second-leg efforts that came up just short against PSG and Strasbourg in 1996/97 and 1997/98 respectively, and a memorable last-minute Steve McManaman solo effort away to Celtic in 1997. By the time Gérard Houllier led the club to UEFA Cup glory in Dortmund in May 2001, it truly felt like we had never been away. Along the way, Liverpool supporters have formed a mythology that sustains and energises us, season after season, one based around people, places, opponents, moments in time, glories witnessed: from Internazionale in ‘65 to Barcelona in ’19, and countless examples in between, whether St. Etienne in ‘77 or AS Roma in ’84, Olympiakos, Juventus, Chelsea and AC Milan in ’05, Barcelona and Chelsea in ’07, Real Madrid in ’09, or Manchester City and AS Roma in ’18, and yes, even Athens in ’07 and Kiev in ’18, watched over and facilitated by men whose faces, names and words adorn banners, statues and stands.If people wonder how the unlikeliest of nights, such as Istanbul or Barcelona earlier this month, don’t happen for Liverpool sometimes but all the time, even in the midst of a league title drought that will now stretch to at least 30 years: this is a major part of it. League titles can be bought, and usually are; but this is a competition where other factors can influence the outcome and very often do, amongst them the weight of history and the belief it generates.So while 2005 was undoubtedly a shock on some levels, ITV commentator Clive Tyldesley (oddly enough) summed it up perfectly in the moments after the final whistle in Istanbul: “They never forgot what it felt like to be the best”. By which he meant the club; not transient things like players, managers, coaches or even owners, but the fans, the institution. He was 100% correct. We haven’t forgotten in the meantime either, and we likely never will. It would take a drought far longer than 30 years for that to ever happen.This is old terrain for Liverpool. Very old: this team’s presence in Madrid forms part of a 55 year-old continuum. That experience is likely to be a key advantage against such a quality team as Tottenham, because the manager and players as a distinct entity (i.e. separate to Rafa Benítez’s team, separate to Gérard Houllier’s, to Bob Paisley’s, etc.) have succeeded in taking the club’s illustrious history and adopting and channelling it in a way that saw its greatest manifestation to date versus Barcelona, where doubts at being 0-3 down to a great team turned to steadfast faith as soon as the teams emerged from the Anfield tunnel.The scenes at the end, where the players stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Kop and joined the supporters in song, felt equal parts celebration and an acknowledgement of what both had just achieved, together, that sense of certainty from the Anfield stands having received its physical manifestation through the players, via the ability in their feet and the mental and physical resolve in their minds and bodies. This is what Jürgen Klopp really wanted when he spoke about doubters and believers: symbiosis. The supporters transmitting their belief to his players, and his players transforming that belief into something real, into visions you can touch.None of this happened overnight, or even inside 43 months; but Jürgen Klopp knew even before he arrived what Liverpool Football Club was all about, and what he must have seen was a five-decade headstart. As he recalled later, in 2018, of his decision to accept the job: “I love the history. I really am a football romantic. I knew I probably can help. They maybe really need me, in this time. I know what I’m good at.”In truth, the German is good at a lot of things: but one of his greatest triumphs has been the extent to which he identified and expertly tapped into a resource that is far less tangible than money, but is as good an equaliser as you will ever find in the face of it. The immediacy and urgency of his appeal for the supporters to “change from doubter to believer…now” on that day back in October 2015 suggests that he was keenly aware of it even then. This time last year, I described it like this: A better analogy might be that of a “snowball” effect: increasing in speed, accumulating in energy and expanding in size at a rapidly accelerating rate with every turn until its self-propelling power becomes unstoppable. Mixed up somewhere in the middle of this run to Madrid, of last year’s journey to Kiev, are all of our yesterdays, all of our fondest memories as Liverpool supporters, a core sustained by the memories of over five decades which has gained the strength of 7 European wins since the disappointment of a year ago, including those memorable victories over PSG, Napoli, Bayern Munich and Barcelona.Throw in the additional momentum created by the recruitment of quality player after quality player since the summer of 2016, and it may be more accurate to say that the snowball has developed into an avalanche. By now, it feels like nothing or nobody can stop it. Certainly not Tottenham Hotspur.* * *We’ve been here before, have we not? As recently as one year ago, in fact, but mere proximity in time undersells the extent of Liverpool’s familiarity with this terrain. So let me instead put it to you like this:The 2019 Champions League final represents the European Cup’s 64th title decider. Liverpool have now contested 9 of them, or 14%, almost exactly 1 every 7 years since the competition’s inauguration in 1955. However, as we know, the club only contested it for the first time, under Bill Shankly, during the 1964/65 season, the initial price of entry back then being the English league championship trophy and nothing less. So, it would be more accurate to say that Liverpool have now contested 9 finals out of the last 55, or 16%, an average of about 1 every 6 years since 1965.Of course, the club didn’t reach its first final until 1977, the competition’s 22nd in all. Another way to look at it, then, would be to say that Liverpool have reached 9 European Cup finals out of 43 since the start of the 1976/77 season, or 21%, an average of roughly 1 every 5 years. Then again, wouldn’t it be more accurate to exclude the seasons in which European competition was unavailable to the club following the Heysel tragedy from our calculations? After all, the double-winners of 1986 or the irresistible 1987/88 side might have had a good shot at increasing that running average during a period where Romanian, Portuguese and Dutch teams were crowned champions, but those players never had the chance through no fault of their own.So, take those 6 years in the wilderness out of the equation, and Liverpool have reached 9 of the 37 European Cup finals for which they were eligible to compete since 1976 (i.e. during seasons in which winning their own domestic league would have gained them entry to the competition), or 24%, an average of roughly 1 every 4 years. For context, AC Milan and Real Madrid have reached 8 apiece during the same time period, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus 7 (and those clubs were eligible for all 43).But let’s narrow our focus somewhat here: what about Liverpool’s performance in this competition compared to their fellow English clubs, going all the way back to 1955? Let’s look at the other members of the current top-6 first: against Liverpool’s 9 finals, Manchester United have contested 5, Chelsea 2, Arsenal 1, Tottenham now 1, and Manchester City…0. So, then: 9 to the Reds, 9 to the rest. With no other former finalists residing in the Premier League, we must expand our search to include Championship clubs, where we can add Nottingham Forest (2), Aston Villa (1) and Leeds United (1). That makes it Liverpool 9, Every Other Club in England 13.Of the 22 times where an English team has reached the final of the world’s preeminent club football competition, Liverpool accounts for 41% of them. The next closest, Manchester United, have 23% (Manchester City, for a club that typically doesn’t see the term very often anymore, gets a “nil” here too). A European Cup final every 4 years, then, and if we include Fairs/UEFA Cup/Europa League finals, that figure becomes 13 European finals in the last 41 years where the club was eligible to compete, or 1 every 3 years or so. Throw in semi-finals and include the old Cup-Winners Cup, and it becomes a trip to the last-4 of a European competition 20 times since 1964/65, a rate of two in every 5 years of eligibility going back 55 years.Yeah, we’ve been here before. From Munich to Barcelona, Paris to Rome, Kiev to London, Istanbul to Madrid: they know the name. European football, and this competition in particular, have been Liverpool’s DNA since before Jürgen Klopp was born. The most famous Bill Shankly quote of them all speaks of conquering the bloody world and, much like the Beatles, his beloved club had to leave Merseyside to achieve that, starting in Reykjavík on the 17th of August 1964 with Liverpool’s first ever European game.From that moment on, the club has been relentless in its pursuit of Shankly’s vision: on Saturday, Liverpool will complete their 23rd campaign in club football’s most important competition. It’s a staggering total that includes 9 straight from 1976/77 to 1984/85 (inclusive), back when you had to win your own domestic league or the competition itself to gain entry. It means that over one-third of all European Cup competitions have been contested, to a greater or lesser extent, by Liverpool.This remains a competition ruled uncannily by European football’s aristocracy. The oil money-backed clubs, for example, namely Chelsea since 2003, Manchester City since 2008 and PSG since 2011, have claimed only 1 trophy and 2 finals between them in a combined 35 seasons to date. Premier League and Ligue 1 titles have flowed for the oligarchs of Russia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar since their respective arrivals in England and France, but the most coveted prize of all has proven to be far more elusive.It will likely fall to them again, of course, especially City; but for now, the big silver trophy’s affinity still seems inexorably drawn to old money rather than new, to the clubs with the deepest, strongest roots. The last first-time winners of the competition were Chelsea back in 2012; before them, it was Borussia Dortmund in 1997, then Marseille in 1993. That’s two new winners in the past 25 years; Tottenham Hotspur will be aiming to make it three in 26 on the 1st of June.* * *Had it been Ajax Amsterdam awaiting Liverpool in Madrid, as it so nearly was, the next part of this preview would have continued in a similar vein to the last, namely outlining the history and prestige that their name carries in this competition.We would have remembered Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens and Rinus Michels, total football and the 3-in-a-row from 1971—1973. We would have recalled how that team arose out of the one that beat Liverpool 7-3 on aggregate in 1966, the only competitive meetings between the clubs to date. We would have remembered that Cruyff was only 19 at the time, the same age as Rhian Brewster, and how the first leg was played in fog so thick that the game was subsequently dubbed “De Mist Wedstijd” (or, “The Fog Game”).We would have then gone on to recall how Louis van Gaal, supposedly at that game in 1966 as a 15 year-old Ajax youth prospect, guided them to their fourth European Cup in 1995, dispatching the mighty AC Milan of Fabio Capello in the Viennese final with some of the greatest young Dutch talent of all time in their ranks: Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf, Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars, Edwin van der Sar, et al. And we would have acknowledged the symmetry which brought the latter duo to a European Cup final once again some 24 years later, this time as Director of Football and Chief Executive Officer respectively.In other words, this preview would have taken due cognisance of the romance and history involved in what would have been a meeting of European royalty in Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano. The grand old clubs of Europe, nine of them to be precise, have accounted for 22 of the last 25 Champions League titles, and both Ajax and Liverpool are amongst them, having won 9 of the 63 competitions to date between them overall (the others being AC Milan, Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus, Inter, Manchester United and Real). It would have been very much a clash of European heavyweights.With all due respect, a preview involving Tottenham Hotspur must necessarily take a different approach. Liverpool, as mentioned, have competed for this trophy alone 23 times, while their opponents have qualified for Europe in general a total of 26 times (which includes the Intertoto Cup); the Reds have reached the European Cup final more often (9) than Spurs have even qualified for the competition (5), and won it as many times; and they have played 208 games in it to Tottenham’s 46.History, of course, is not everything, and Tottenham have certainly made plenty of their own this season and last. And it’s not that they don’t have any European heritage: they competed in, and won, a European competition before Liverpool did, with two already in the trophy cabinet by the time the Reds won one, and with all due respect to our resident Arsenal supporters, I must point out that they still lead their north London neighbours 3-2 on European silverware despite not having won one in almost three and a half decades (that may soon change in Baku, of course). It’s just that the vast majority of their success is remote and too patchy over the years to truly form a meaningful European tradition.Having suffered a semi-final exit to Eusebio’s Benfica in 1962, their first campaign in Europe, Danny Blanchflower was the captain as they lifted the Cup-Winners Cup in 1963, thrashing Atlético Madrid 5-1 in Rotterdam. They competed only twice more in European competition over the next 8 years before claiming the UEFA Cup in 1972, beating Wolves 3-2 on aggregate in the final. They reached the semi-final in 1973 (Liverpool knocked them out on their way to winning a first European trophy) and the final in 1974, losing 2-4 on aggregate to Feyenoord. They wouldn’t compete in Europe again for another 7 years.They were back for 4 years in a row from 1981/82 to 1984/85, memorably defeating a talented but thoroughly bent Anderlecht side on penalties at White Hart Lane for the UEFA Cup in 1984, but otherwise suffering exits to Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid respectively in the early 1980’s. The 1990’s saw only three European campaigns, one of which was the 1995/96 Intertoto Cup (in which they lost 0-8 to FC Köln). Only since 2006/07 have they become European regulars, featuring in 12 of the last 13 seasons (8 Europa League, 4 Champions League). Before this year, they had never been past the quarter-final stage in any of them.By contrast, the breaks in Liverpool’s European presence have been far fewer in both length and frequency, stretching all the way back to their debut season in 1964/65: in fact, their first absence from European competition after that didn’t come until the enforced post-Heysel one from 1985/86, an uninterrupted stretch of 21 years. Upon their return in the 1991/92 UEFA Cup, they simply picked up where they left off, overturning a 0-2 first-leg deficit against Auxerre on a memorable November night at Anfield. The club has subsequently competed in 22 out of 28 European campaigns since the ban, making it a staggering 43 out of a possible 49 since the mid-60s.Pedigree is, therefore, not a resource that Tottenham will be able to call upon in Madrid, at least not to anywhere near the same extent as their opponents. In some respects that could be seen as a good thing for them, in so far as it frees them from the weight of expectations that can come with a glorious past. However, when you’re going up against players who can handle that pressure and even thrive upon it (the Barcelona game proved the appetite of Jürgen Klopp’s “fucking mentality giants” for it), and who play for a club with Liverpool’s past, that absence of heritage can become a significant disadvantage. Part Two: The Present “Audere est Facere” (“To dare is to do”) — Tottenham Hotspur club motto.Nonetheless, on the 1st of June, Tottenham will live up to at least one part of their club motto: they will “dare”. Primarily, to try and win their first piece of major silverware since 2008 and a first European trophy since 1984, but in the process they will dare to attempt a few other things too:– They will dare to try and become the first club to win a European Cup final at the first time of asking since Borussia Dortmund in 1997 (Valencia in 2000, Bayer Leverkusen in 2002, Monaco in 2004, Arsenal in 2006 and Chelsea in 2008 have all failed in the meantime);– They will dare to try and join Chelsea (2012) as the only new names to be inscribed on the famous old trophy in the 22 years since Karl-Heinz Riedle shocked Juventus in Munich’s Olympiastadion;– They will dare to try and become just the sixth English winner of club football’s most coveted prize and, what’s more, achieve that feat before their north London neighbours Arsenal (as well as Manchester City and similar flavours of the month over the years, like Blackburn Rovers);– Speaking of English clubs: Tottenham will dare to try and save vast swathes of the country from their greatest fear, namely the spectre of “unbearable” (i.e. happy) Scousers, and in the process give fans (and players now, seemingly) of every other club new dreams and songs to sing of Liverpool players slipping or being injured, or supporters being “battered in the streets” and left for dead, to go with the classics about “victims” and 135 people who went to watch a couple of football games in the 1980s and never returned home;– More importantly from a Liverpool perspective: they will dare to prepare diligently, organise themselves meticulously, play physically and skilfully, and face up to an opponent that has finished 26 points clear of them domestically with defiance.Make no mistake: these lads will dare your fucking face off. Derring-do? Yeah, they’ve got that. The bulldog spirit of Gareth Southgate’s World Cup heroes? Very much so, in the form of Kieran Trippier, Danny Rose, Eric Dier, Dele Alli and His Excellency Harry Kane. A dash of South American snide? Yes, quite a bit more than a dash actually in the form of manager Mauricio Pochettino and his frankly terrifying miniature assistant, Jesus Perez (Erik Lamela too, if he’s around). Quality defenders? Yes, in particular Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld. Dangerous attackers? A bunch of them, unfortunately, including Son Heung-min, Lucas Moura (the heroes of the quarter-final and semi-final respectively) and Christian Eriksen.These individuals will all come together and collectively dare in a way that makes their supporters watching at home and in the Wanda Metropolitano very proud, of that I have no doubt. Tottenham Hotspur will dare. They’ll dare, and then they’ll dare some more. Genuinely: all of the above is true.It’s the “doing” part that they’re going to have trouble with in Madrid. Every great team reaches a point where “luck” is no longer a telling factor in whether they win or lose; a point where they no longer have to take what they are given but, rather, what they want. Tottenham are a long way from that point; Liverpool have only just arrived.* * *Last year’s final remains a blur to me. I suppose it’s always like that when it goes against you, maybe because you’re less inclined to revisit events afterwards. Or maybe it’s just a hazard of not being at the game. Then again, I can recall minute details of 2005 even though I wasn’t in Istanbul, right down to the way I felt at various points during the evening. Everything immediately became a cherished memory once Andriy Shevchenko’s anaemic penalty struck Jerzy Dudek’s outstretched hand, moments in time dissected with urgency and fondness in the hours afterwards and subsequently reinforced in the mind over days, weeks, months and years. Over decades.Athens in 2007, on the other hand, is like one big “scene missing” caption in my head, my vague recollections both distant and impersonal. Kiev, although more recent and therefore fresher in my mind, probably has more in common with the latter than the former. I certainly recall individual events in the NSC Olympiyskiy with the clarity of a single year’s remove; but what I mostly remember about that night is splitting a crate of Corona and a bottle of CÎROC vanilla vodka before, during and after the game with my wife, sister-in-law and her outwardly sympathetic Chelsea supporter boyfriend, and later, putting my barbeque in the shed in the middle of a thunderstorm at 5 a.m. while dopily contemplating the concept of pathetic fallacy.Liverpool’s return to the final this season presents not only an opportunity to win a sixth European Cup, it sets the scene for a transformation of what Kiev 2018 will ultimately mean in the history of the club. What this team achieved last season is no longer an outlier but one half of a pair, for now at least (who would bet against the third part of a trilogy in Istanbul next year?) This sense of continuity, in turn, provides a compelling excuse to revisit and reevaluate the agony of 12 months ago, one that never arose post-Athens, because those events no longer stand alone: they are instead inextricably linked to what happens in Madrid on the 1st of June. And what that 1-3 defeat in Kiev has reinforced for me, more than anything else, is this: “luck” is one of the most misunderstood, misapplied and abused concepts in football. As is the concept of “destiny” or “fate”, or anything else that seeks to remove control and responsibility from the players on the pitch, their coaches and the officials.Anyone with an interest in the game, from supporters to pundits, to the managers and players themselves, are guilty of this. The Ayoze Perez shot that hit the bar for Newcastle against Liverpool recently, for example, was deemed “extremely unlucky” by the commentator I was listening to. How? The ball went exactly where it should have, given the angle and the technique and power of the shot. How was he “unlucky”, much less “extremely” so?And the cliché that luck “evens itself out” over the course of a season, as though it’s a coin being flipped, is the most ludicrous idea of all. Show me where a key Liverpool player avoided a red card this season for a dangerous, high-footed professional foul at 0-0 in what amounted to a title decider refereed by an official from Merseyside, or at least where that good fortune for Vincent Kompany and Manchester City was evened out with bad. It can’t be done because it didn’t happen.In a wider sense, for many years I was frequently inclined to dismiss the achievements of Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United as luck, both on a micro level (i.e. late or injury-time winners, penalty awards, goals against the run of play) and a macro one (i.e. trophies). As a way of dealing with their relentless success over two decades, it could actually be quite theraputic, and it’s probably a good sign for the progress of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool that supporters of other clubs and hostile media figures alike have similarly been attributing the successes of this season and last to “luck” (and, in the case of our Evertonian brethren, a pact with Satan himself).Maturity brings perspective. I can accept now that Ferguson’s teams typically earned whatever luck came their way by being consistently the best in terms of ability, mentality and ruthlessness, qualities which Liverpool have also been showing in spades. I see now that luck is nothing more than a series of random events meted out by the universe, and destiny or fate simply a measure of how well an individual or group manages those events; essentially, whether they end up being the victims of bad luck or the beneficiaries of good luck. This is especially true in football, where the course of entire nine-month seasons can be altered in literal seconds, and it rings even truer again in the case of knockout games. A couple of examples from the respective semi-final comebacks of Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur bear this out.Both second-legs found the home team leading by the slenderest of margins as they entered 5 minutes of injury-time, the away sides needing just a single goal to change everything. And they were pushing for it too, creating high drama in both Liverpool and Amsterdam. At Anfield, with the clock showing 93:15, Fabinho nipped in front of Lionel Messi and drew a foul. Barcelona didn’t touch the ball again, with James Milner doing similar a few moments later down the left and then keeping it in the corner until the final whistle.In the Johan Cruyff Arena, Daley Sinkgraven (at 92:14), Hakim Ziyech (at 92:20) and, most damagingly, Dušan Tadić (at 92:25) all had opportunities to similarly head towards the corner deep into injury-time, but instead contrived to hand possession back to their visitors by trying, and failing, to fashion a goal. Lucas Moura would strike the winner a little while later, as the clock reached 95:00.Now, Ajax may have counted themselves “unlucky” after being the better side for three-quarters of their semi-final tie and leading 3-0 at one point, and Tottenham’s winner certainly owed more to a speculative downfield punt than any sort of real craft. But the Dutch side had left themselves vulnerable to such “bad luck” with their earlier naivety, pushing for a killer third goal when their real enemy was the clock more than the scoreboard, especially with so many of their players looking shattered.The parallels to the 26th of May 1989 gave me chills. John Barnes took possession at 90:57 that night with a clear path towards the Kop-end corner flag if he wanted it. Instead, he elected to surge goalwards and was quickly dispossessed by Kevin Richardson. 23 seconds later, Arsenal were winning the league title at the other end of the ground. Unlucky? How can something so self-inflicted be unlucky?We were speaking about luck once again a year ago, in the aftermath of Kiev, understandably so: losing your talismanic attacking player to a freak injury after half an hour and then having your goalkeeper (carrying a concussion, unbeknownst to everyone in the ground, including himself) commit not one, but two of the most bizarre errors ever seen in a showpiece final was clearly the height of misfortune. It was then; it remains so now.Yet in the case of Mo Salah, at least, and especially the manner in which control of the game ran away from Liverpool following his departure (they had started the better side, remember), not everything can be attributed to “bad luck”. Of seven substitutes that night, the only ones who would ordinarily be in a position to materially influence a game of this magnitude were half-fit (Adam Lallana and Emre Can); the only other attacking option, with the club having elected to send both Divock Origi and Daniel Sturridge out on loan, was the ineffectual Dominic Solanke; and the rest (Simon Mignolet, Nathaniel Clyne, Alberto Moreno and Ragnar Klavan) were clearly only there as cover. The decision not to immediately replace Philippe Coutinho following his departure in January was clearly the correct one in the medium- to long-term, but proved less effective in the context of Kiev.It is more difficult to attribute the lapses of Karius to anything other than bad luck, given that the elbow to the temple he suffered in the 48th minute was missed by everyone in the stadium at the time (therefore, no opportunity was afforded for the medical team to go through the concussion protocols) and was subsequently confirmed by an expert in the field to have left him with spatial dysfunction. That is, unless you’re one of those people who thinks the subsequent concussion diagnosis was “convenient” or flatout nonsense, in which case the German’s lapses were entirely self-inflicted wounds on Liverpool’s part because a goalkeeper who would ordinarily blunder like that should never have been on the pitch in the first place, right?But remember, this isn’t just about setting yourself up to avoid bad luck; it’s also about how an individual or a group can exploit opportunities to take advantage of good luck. In this regard, Real Madrid gave Liverpool a footballing lesson that night, one which had absolutely nothing to do with the silky skills of Luka Modrić or Toni Kroos. The player who committed the defining acts of the game, after all, was not Gareth Bale with his two goals but rather the thug who deliberately injured two of Liverpool’s key players, a man who knew, even as he wrapped his arm around Salah’s and drove him headfirst into the ground or thrust his elbow into Karius’s head, that he did so with virtual impunity.The same individual had also attempted the Salah takedown on Dani Alves in the previous season’s final. If you watch the video of that incident, you’ll see him immediately spring to his feet and berate the referee for awarding a free, despite a deliberate attempt to harm an opponent. This is Sergio Ramos; this is Real Madrid; and from the vantage point of a year into the future, it gets very difficult to attribute any part of that defeat in Kiev exclusively to “luck” when every significant moment had been planned by Real to favour them (the Alves incident from the 2017 final proves it) and they executed that plan so effectively.This is before you even begin to consider the technical advantages they had, particularly in midfield. Liverpool, for their part, were neither prepared for the bad luck that befell them on the night nor primed to rip fortune from destiny’s grasp, as they did so beautifully against Barcelona earlier this month, most notably when Trent’s gamble from the corner paid off for the fourth, but also in their entire demeanour right from the first whistle, whether it was Andy Robertson giving Messi’s hair a little Glaswegian ruffle or Virgil Van Dijk taking man and ball in the lead-up to the third goal, Fabinho berating Luis Suárez or both Sadio Mané and Trent mercilessly punishing dazed lapses by Jordi Alba.In the process, one of the best teams in the world was battered from one corner of Anfield to the next like a rag doll and left traumatised to such an extent that their captain and greatest footballer of all-time supposedly burst into “inconsolable” tears in the dressing-room afterwards. Elsewhere, Luis Suárez was left staring vacantly into space after each goal, as if temporarily rendered catatonic, while £142m Philippe Coutinho, whom they had previously ripped ruthlessly from Liverpool’s grasp, seemed to shrink to the physical stature of an infant. In the days to follow, the Spanish press would speak of the “greatest humiliation in history”; one of the publications even led with a black cover, as though in mourning. And all of this in a Champions League semi-final, by definition the second-most important game in club football.Liverpool didn't wait for "luck", good or bad. They must keep that going in Madrid, and are already in a better position to do so than they were a year ago. For one thing, assuming a clean bill of health for everyone bar Naby Keita (who has travelled), the bench is in much better shape to contribute this time. In the absence of both Roberto Firmino and Salah in the second leg against Barcelona, a rejuvenated Origi and Xherdan Shaqiri were handed the responsibility of leading the line alongside Sadio Mané and responded with 2 goals and an assist respectively. Both will be ready in Madrid if called upon. Sturridge also has game time in his legs, and these three certainly represent a better potential cavalry force than Solanke and the unfit duo of Lallana and Can did in Kiev. It gives the manager options, and the team a level of security if bad luck in the form of injuries does strike again.The substitutes’ bench has also been expanded to 12 for this season’s final, and a fourth substitution allowed if the game goes into extra-time. A year ago, Liverpool would probably have been pushed to find 23 fit players to fill a squad of that size, and only made two substitutions in all during the game. This year, the expanded bench allows Jürgen Klopp to, as an example, select Mignolet, Dejan Lovren, Joe Gomez, Milner, Shaqiri, Origi and Sturridge without having difficult decisions to make regarding Moreno, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Rhian Brewster, Lallana, or even Keita. They can all travel to Madrid, and that group could easily provide 4 very effective substitutes if necessary.The inclusion of VAR for this year’s final could also be crucial. It may not have mattered in terms of the incidents in Kiev, which happened in a flash and saw even otherwise intelligent people portraying them as innocent accidents afterwards, but it certainly blunts one potential cutting edge for Liverpool’s opponents. Much has been made this season of Salah’s supposed cheating, but Tottenham can rest assured that during his Liverpool career the Egyptian has typically proven more likely to be naive and stay on his feet even when given ample opportunity to go down (see games against Napoli, Bayern Munich and FC Porto this season). Liverpool, on the other hand, would have every right to be concerned about Spurs in that regard. Their manager has called diving a “small detail” in the past, and as recently as February of last year we witnessed Dele Alli (no contact, booked), Harry Kane (no contact, penalty) and Erik Lamela (slight contact, penalty) all diving in the box for decisions at Anfield, two-thirds of which were successful and allowed them to steal a point. VAR reduces the likelihood of that happening again, which could be crucial in what might very well be a tightly-contested final.* * *Perhaps most of all, the trick with luck is to remove it as a factor entirely. The best way to do that is by having superior players with a strong mentality at your disposal, as obvious as that sounds. There are some who, to do this day, will swear blind that Liverpool were “lucky” in Istanbul — three goals in 7 minutes, but otherwise dominated by a superior team, right? While there is no doubt that AC Milan were superior in ability and technique to their opponents, such a position undersells the vast quality and experience at Liverpool’s disposal (Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso, Sami Hyypiä, Jamie Carragher and Didi Hamann in particular), the excellence of their goals (including Gerrard’s run and Baros’ backheel for the penalty) and, the most significant quality of all, an unbreakable mentality that allowed them to keep going at 0-3 while their opponents folded at the first sign of resistance, as they had in A Coruña the previous season.For Real Madrid last year, psychologically ruthless and possessing both a superior squad of players and a greater level of experience than their opponents, the major pieces of good fortune that came their way in Kiev (namely a dislocated shoulder for Salah, a concussion for Karius, and the fact that their captain escaped punishment for both incidents) were more an insurance policy than anything. It’s easy to forget now that man of the match Bale only entered the fray on 61 minutes, while Liverpool’s ace in the hole had managed only 21 minutes of first-team football in two months, as good an indicator as any of the disparity in playing resources between the two clubs.In Dani Carvajal/Nacho, Raphaël Varane, Ramos and Marcelo, they had a back four to match Liverpool’s, while their superiority in midfield was marked. They had already weathered an early storm of pressure and begun to turn the screw even before Karius’ first mistake, with Cristiano Ronaldo’s header forcing a smart save from the German and Isco hitting the crossbar, while Bale’s first would have been unstoppable for any goalkeeper you care to mention in the history of the game. Sadio Mané’s herculean efforts upfront kept things interesting until the 83rd minute, scoring Liverpool’s equaliser and hitting the post, but the control of the game was always Real’s. That may have been different if Salah had stayed on, but more than likely not.In Madrid, it will be Liverpool’s turn to remove luck as a factor or, even better, find a way to benefit from it. That’s something the club failed to do in both 2007 (e.g. Inzaghi’s first goal) and 2018 (as outlined above), and indeed 1985, the night football took a backseat to tragedy (the denial of a late penalty for a foul on Ronnie Whelan). 1984, as ever, remains the template: when the greatest Liverpool team of all, at least up until now, went up against a hugely talented opponent on their own patch, in front of their own rabid support, a club since proven to have been in the business of bribing referees at the time, and brought home the third part of an incredible treble; when 13 of the best in the business strutted around the hell of Rome’s Stadio Olimpico like they owned the place.The challenge ahead of this team in Madrid, with all due respect to Tottenham, is unlikely to be quite so intimidating as 1984, but the same rules apply. Liverpool have a superior first-XI and squad, and a 26-point lead over their opponents domestically. Spurs won’t have a Bale-level talent on the bench, or a scumbag like Ramos on the pitch, or anything near Real’s nous. This is their first European final under Pochettino, and the Argentine’s record against Liverpool shows just 1 win out of 11. Klopp, meanwhile, has lost only 1 out of 9 against Tottenham and been to 4 European finals in 7 years, 3 of them with Liverpool. They also arrive with the emotional and professional triumph of that second leg against Barcelona recent in the memory, together, hopefully, with a large helping of the belief and energy that crackled and snapped inside Anfield that night. Some asked the question, in the aftermath of the semi-finals, whether Tottenham’s second-half recovery from 0-3 down on aggregate against Ajax was as good as, or better than, Liverpool’s comeback from a similar deficit against Barcelona. After all, Spurs did it in 45 minutes (well, 50) away from home, whereas Liverpool had the power of Anfield behind them for 90 minutes, right? My response is this:Istanbul will always be the benchmark for iconic comebacks, given the magnitude and profile of the occasion, as well as the drama and intensity of the turnaround. But none of it, or at least very little, was planned, that is unless Rafa Benítez’s intention was to pick a half-fit player who would have to come off midway through the first-half and replace him with another half-fit player who took an age to find shinpads and would collapse with cramp in extra-time, all the while leaving his midfield dangerously under-manned for Kaká to exploit for 45 minutes. Rather, his plan didn’t work and he had to improvise, as did Pochettino in Amsterdam. It would also be more than fair to argue that both Liverpool in 2005 and Tottenham in 2019 were second-best in those games, regardless of the respective results.The difference with Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Barcelona, primarily, is that the whole performance and result were planned, controlled and executed more or less to the blueprint of what we saw unfold on the 7th of May. The enforced substitution of Andy Robertson was clearly unforeseen, but the introduction of double-goalscorer Gini Wijnaldum with instructions to get forward was a perfect example of making random events work in your favour: bad luck for Liverpool turned into good luck, and vice-versa for Barcelona and Robertson’s Uruguayan assailant. Furthermore, there was no argument over who was the better team, even with Firmino and Salah missing. Given all of these factors, the Barcelona comeback is objectively more impressive even than Istanbul, where a kind of beautiful madness descended over the Atatürk for 10 second-half minutes followed by a heroic defensive stand the rest of the way. No trophy was awarded for this victory, of course; but if Liverpool end up winning in Madrid, it will certainly be right up there alongside, indisputably, the greatest European Cup final comeback of all time. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that going for it against a young, naive Ajax side whose legs (and arses) were gone and getting your reward is some way down the list in comparison to either.Given the nature of that victory over the La Liga champions, and the other factors mentioned, the Reds arrive as deserved favourites: luck should not be the deciding factor against them in this final, at least not if they play to anywhere near their full potential. But therein lies the task on the 1st of June: to be all they can be. To see this through. As HBHR has put it, to play like the favourites they are. Part Three: The Future “It feels bittersweet now but the season isn’t over. I want to say thank you to my teammates, coaches, and to the fans. And fans, please bring Anfield to Madrid.” — Mohamed Salah (May 2019) For now, the future for this team, this club, is the 1st of June. None of this is written in the stars, or governed by fate: it is, instead, history being made, by an historic team and the supporters who follow it. Jürgen Klopp has created a group whose mentality, personified, would cut glass. I believe this makes it highly unlikely that they won’t play at something approaching their magnificent best in Madrid; but Tottenham won’t be there to simply make up the numbers, which means that belief from the stands could make all the difference once again. If Salah gets his wish, Spurs will find it very difficult to resist.Allow me to close with a few pre-season predictions. FA Cup aside, I haven’t done too badly with these so far (and who knows, that might have gone differently had Liverpool drawn Rotherham United at home in the third round instead of Wolves away). I see absolutely no reason to change the part in bold:I do believe it could.Prediction: Liverpool 2-0 Tottenham Hotspur.
Someone (thong clad female) ran onto the pitch and the ref stopped the game... wow...
23' Salah gets the throw... he's 1-1 with Vertonghen... shoots over the bar..
