Mohamed Salah has a clear personal preference over who Liverpool face in this season’s Champions League final.
The Reds booked their place in this season’s showpiece after their semi-final comeback victory against Villarreal on Tuesday. Salah had provided the assist for Sadio Mane’s second goal in last week’s two-goal victory over the Spanish side at Anfield but the Reds were left sweating over their place in the final after a rally from Unai Emery’s side in the second leg.
Goals from Boulaye Dia and Francis Coquelin gave Villarreal a seemingly commanding two-goal lead on the night to level the tie on aggregate to leave Jurgen Klopp’s side rocking, but they responded in style after the break. Fabinho, Luis Diaz and Sadio Mane were all on target for the visitors after the break as Liverpool won on the night and secured a 5-2 victory on aggregate.
After the match, Salah spoke to BT Sport and made a definitive call on who he now wants to face in the Champions League final in Paris. The Reds will face the winners of Real Madrid against Manchester City, who will meet in the second leg of their semi-final on Wednesday after Pep Guardiola’s side edged out Madrid in a seven-goal thriller in Manchester last week.
The Egyptian forward wants to face the Spanish side in the decider, having fallen short again them in the showpiece event in 2018. In that game, Salah was forced off early through an injury while Real Madrid went on to lift the trophy with a 3-1 victory.
Salah explained after the game in Villarreal: "I want to play Madrid, I have to be honest. City is a really tough team, we played against them a few times this season. I think personally, I would prefer Madrid. We lost in the final to them so I want to play against them and hopefully win it."
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Speaking about reaching personal targets and helping the Reds reach a possible historic quadruple, Salah added: "Top assists is not something really big, top goal scorer is always something really big. Today, when I gave the ball to Fab it changed everything. Assists count for sure, goals as well. The team is doing unbelievable so let’s hope for the best.
"For sure [on quadruple being the target], for sure. Maybe not in the beginning of the season, I always focus on Champions League and Premier League, but now we are close for everything so why not? After we beat City in the semi-finals of the FA Cup [when he started to think about Quadruple], but even in the Champions League group stage we played amazing, we had a tough group and played amazing. I started to think we were going to win the Champions League since then."
Liverpool still have a long way to go this season as they still trail Manchester City by a solitary point in the Premier League title race while they have the Champions League final and FA Cup final against Chelsea still to come.
