The Champions League final carried echoes of the scrappy showpieces at which English teams triumphed in 70s and 80sFor Liverpool this has been a season of two extraordinary statistics: 11.7mm and 64%. It was the former that denied them a goal (albeit a freakish one via John Stones and Ederson) away to Manchester City in January, and it was with the latter they won the Champions League. Neither makes much sense. That games can be swayed by margins as fine as that defies comprehension. But it feels at least as incredible that Liverpool could win a Champions League final with only 64% pass accuracy.Liverpool are a team who worry about pass accuracy far less than many sides. Their pass completion...
Under their German manager the Anfield club are geared to connect with something other than simply success on the pitchAnd so, back into the red. In the end it seemed fitting that Liverpool should win this Champions League final through an effort of shared will. This was a night when the gears refused to click, the circuits rarely sparked, and when taking that last step was always likely to be matter of spirit and bloody-minded certainty.How do you make a champion team? At the final whistle in Madrid, as the air seemed to fizz and crackle and the red and white shapes melted into the green, Jürgen Klopp hugged Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson to his chest, his great beaming,...
All Mauricio Pochettino’s planning went awry after just 22 seconds. Liverpool took full advantageA tremendous madness: Mauricio Pochettino’s soundbite to describe Tottenham’s passage to their first Champions League final was a decent attempt to sum it all up. There were the late goals that kept them alive in the second half of the group-phase campaign, not to mention the one from Lucas Moura that crowned the epic comeback in the semi-final at Ajax. And what about the VAR craziness in the quarter-final at Manchester City?The well ran dry against a Liverpool team that showed control and a streetwise edge and it felt as though Pochettino’s comment could be best applied to the moment that shaped the match after 22 seconds....
Champions League final’s star forwards have countless goals between them – but no major trophies. In Madrid one will shed the nearly-man tagHanging on to a rising balloon presents you with a difficult decision: let go before it’s too late, or hold on and keep getting higher. When Harry Kane injured his ankle in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Manchester City, Tottenham’s chances of ending their season in Madrid on Saturday night seemed to have narrowed to a fine point.Kane has of course been the razor edge and all-round attacking totem of Mauricio Pochettino’s team, with an entire system set up to funnel and shift around him. Yet fast forward two months and in his absence...
The relentless pressure to win the ball high up the pitch gives Jürgen Klopp’s engine room a different kind of creativityWhat a Champions League final we have in store. I am in Madrid and visited the Wanda Metropolitano day and there was already an anticipatory buzz around the stadium, so the atmosphere should be wonderful . I am lucky enough to have secured a ticket through the Uefa Masters course I’m doing and I’m expecting the match between two fantastic English teams to be as vibrant as the atmosphere. With the attacking style of both teams it promises to be spectacular. Whichever team wins will have provided the perfect finish to an amazing story.Which team will that be? That is...