IT’S ABOUT TO GET REAL
You can sum up Jürgen Klopp’s Big Cup story at Liverpool in one word. It’s not “heavy”, or “metal”; it’s not even “heavy-metal” when it’s used as an adjective. It’s “Madrid”. Liverpool beat Spurs at the Estadio Metropolitano, aka the House of Simeone, in 2019 to win their sixth title. In the other four seasons, from 2018-22, they were eliminated by Madrid’s finest: Real three times, including two finals, and Atlético in a just-before-Covid night that gets weirder with every recall. So it was no great surprise when Liverpool, who had a one-in-four chance of drawing Real Madrid in the last 16, drew Real Madrid in the last 16.
The bad news for Liverpool is that Madrid have been – please tell us there’s an award for naffest portmanteau – their Klopptonite in this competition. Also, having signed Eduardo Camavinga, Aurélien Tchouaméni and probably Jude Bellingham, Real are the reason Liverpool’s heavy-metal midfield has been frozen in time. The good news for Liverpool is that you’re only as good as your next Madrid tie. Truth is, with a fair wind and a goalkeeper swap or two, Liverpool could have won the 2018 and 2022 finals, so the teams are closer than a post-Dossena scoreline of Real 11-2 Liverpool might suggest.
“I didn’t watch [the 2022 final] back until this weekend and the thing I realised immediately was … why I hadn’t,” sighed Klopp, symbolically frisbeeing the match DVD out of the nearest open window. “It was proper torture because we played a good game and could have won – and that’s the decisive word because we could but didn’t, because they scored and we didn’t. We saw how experienced Madrid is and how little they are fussed by the fact the other team has chances … What held us back a little was the fact it was a final and we did not take enough risks in little moments. We were not adventurous enough.”
One man who will never lack adventure is the sometimes harrowingly intrepid Darwin Núñez, and Liverpool are hopeful he will recover from shoulder-knack to play some part at Anfield on Tuesday night. “So,” continued Klopp, “somebody told me – and I don’t even know if it was true – that Carlo [Ancelotti] said after the final, that [with] Liverpool it’s cool because they knew exactly what they will face.” Not anymore. Núñez – and Football Daily says this with love, having defended him since day one and misses three and four – is about as predictable as the afterlife. But even in a season when he has been incessantly ridiculed, Núñez has 11 goals and four assists in 28 games – 10 of which were substitute appearances. Núñez’s presence – not to mention the absence of Tchouaméni, Toni Kroos and indeed Casemiro in the Madrid midfield – is among the reasons Liverpool hope that this time, more than any other, they’ll find a way to beat a team from Madrid. But Real have one or two or 14 reasons for optimism themselves. And if they put Klopp out of Big Cup again, perhaps they might even get to keep him.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think what has happened to the men’s England football team over the past six years has been quietly extraordinary. It’s been humming along in the background, but we’re only starting to really understand now [his] gentle revolution” – James Graham reveals he has written a new play called Dear England, chronicling the recent culture shift under Gareth Southgate, who will be played by Joseph Fiennes in the National Theatre production later in 2023. Presumably the audience will be asked to sit at the back with many of the front rows empty?
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Does anyone else’s memory drift back to 1978 and a short BBC2 series called The Pickersgill People? Episode one (if I remember correctly) featured ‘the Sheik of Pickersgill’, who would hold his red and white shemagh while chanting ‘United, United’. Of course, this would never happen in reality” – Peter Storch.
Postings regarding sightings of famous players off the pitch (Football Daily letters passim) reminded me of many not really seen at all. In the 1990s, when hope was still part of the repertoire of Evertonians, on a once-important news discussion group, there were regular claims of sightings. Many of these were along the lines of ‘my auntie’s window-cleaner knows a bloke who lives next door to a woman whose cousin is on the ground staff of [insert any team]’, followed by a ‘revelation’ about a player from said team who was said to be desperate to join Everton’s ‘Dogs of War’. My most cherished memory of those days goes back to the outpouring of euphoric debate that ensued when one of our number claimed to have witnessed Fabrizio Ravanelli coming out of the Goodison Road Supper Bar with a very big portion of chips wrapped in the (now defunct) Football Echo” – Paul Preston.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Rollover.
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