Liverpool have bigger regrets from the Champions League final in Paris last year than losing a football match, given the manner in which their community was first mistreated and then smeared by authorities who had a responsibility to protect them. But you can never pretend that the defeats don’t sting. You wouldn’t have travelled over land and sea to be there if it didn’t make you feel a little bilious to watch those dancing white shirts in the floodlights’ glow.
For elite clubs, bogey teams are rare. The game is too cyclical, its money and power and history too symbolic for any superclub to remain in the shadow of another for long. For Liverpool, Real Madrid are as close as it gets. They have lost five of their last six meetings and the exception was a draw that felt like defeat, a painful second leg during which Liverpool needed to score twice and ran out of ideas before scoring once.
Each of those meetings has contained enough cause for lasting regret. The 1-0 defeat in the Bernabeu in 2014, the beginning of Brendan Rodgers’ end when he picked a reserve team in the group stage; Karim Benzema, that eternal Liverpool headache, scored that night.
The Gareth Bale/Loris Karius final (delete as appropriate according to your own generosity or bitterness). The 3-1 quarter-final first leg defeat in 2021, after which Jurgen Klopp felt broken by how easy Livepool made it for their opponents. Each of those nights stack on top of each other, constructing a tower of resentment.
And then to Paris, where Liverpool had the most shots of any team to not score in a European Cup final and Mohamed Salah had six shots on target, the most of any player in a Champions League final for at least 20 years. “Victory is all that matters in a final,” said Klopp before the final in 2019. Indeed so. Only the losers fret about anything else.
Last year, what warped a potentially era-defining season into a very good one was Liverpool’s inefficient finishing in two matches – the margins in Champions League and Premier League really were that small. They drew with Tottenham and lost to Real Madrid and that was all that stood between them and the closest they’ll ever get to perfection, an unprecedented quadruple. In those two matches, Liverpool had 46 shots and scored once.
Liverpool’s finishing has not been faultless this season (in fact, the defining image of the season is Klopp applauding a forward as if to convey “Next time. Next time you’ll score”). But those frustrations have been eclipsed by a near complete self-destruction of their defensive resilience. Liverpool allowed 107 shots on target in the whole of last season’s Premier League campaign. With more than 40 per cent of this season remaining, they are on 95.
The total number of shots Liverpool are facing has also increased by more than 30 per cent, but more damning still is that the average quality of those chances has increased slightly from last year (and is the highest of any Premier League club). This is not just teams taking potshots from long distances to bump up the numbers. Liverpool have been painfully open.
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Liverpool have defended poorly, ergo Alexander-Arnold is being exposed. Alexander-Arnold getting exposed means he goes forward less to try and counteract the issue, ergo he creates fewer chances and Liverpool look weaker going forward.
This is Liverpool’s butterfly effect. The negative spin is that one problem can quickly become three or four very quickly until the sharp lines go blurry and the team plays as if several of them first met on the street before the match.
The positive inflections are just as obvious: solve that one problem, perhaps with a young central midfielder like Stefan Bajcetic, and colour comes back to the cheeks quickly. Suddenly Alexander-Arnold is playing gorgeous passes again (see: his assist for Darwin Nunez on Saturday). At their best, Liverpool’s interdependency fuels a relentless pursuit of greatness, their individual brilliance catching.
If this fallow season has caused extreme grumpiness to the point of mutiny among sections of Liverpool’s support, Tuesday evening offers a chance for some perspective. For eight successive seasons until 2017, Liverpool failed either to qualify for the Champions League or make it out of the groups. For all the gnashing, they have fallen back into the top-four race with two wins and have a shot at a fifth Champions League quarter-final in six years. It’s not all bad, y’know.
But then it’s Real Madrid. Eventually, in this competition and for Liverpool, it’s always Real Madrid. They are the giant for Klopp and his players to slay, the mirror into which they must stare and find themselves. They break your spirit first by repelling your strengths and then by exposing your weaknesses. Liverpool have plenty of both these days. But only a fool would write them off. Bogey teams are there to be beaten eventually. Fallow seasons can be saved with just a few reminders of what used to work so well.
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