For what will be the seventh time since 2014, Liverpool will meet Real Madrid in the Champions League in February. And, in a way, it seems Florentino Perez is getting exactly what he craves.
As one of the architects behind the Super League debacle last year, the Real Madrid president has remained steadfast in his insistence that European football needs such a concept to save it from a new-age of football fans, whose interest in anything outside of the continent's most glamorous fixtures is apparently dwindling.
“If we look at tennis legends, Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer have played for example 40 times in 15 years," said Perez at Real Madrid's annual general meeting last month. "Nadal and Djokovic have so far played 59 games in 16 years. Is this boring?
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“In football, on the other hand, the data is amazing. If we look at the last Champions League finalist, Liverpool, an historic team with six European Cups, it turns out we have played them only nine times in 67 years. And only three times here in Madrid. What is the point of depriving fans around the world of these matches?"
With a total of 20 European Cups between them, European collisions don't come more mouth-watering than Liverpool games against Real Madrid. Or at least they shouldn't.
But as the pair get set to play their seventh and eighth fixtures against each other in less than 10 years, it seems familiarity is breeding contempt.
You only have to trawl back as recently as late May for the last time these two stalwarts of European football squared off - in the Champions League final, no less, at the Stade de France.
Few Reds supporters there will recall the night's action with much detail given the potentially disastrous treatment from the French authorities outside the venue, but that won't mean there will be a freshness about the tie when they reconvene in Europe's most grandiose competition at the last-16 stage next year. Far from it, in fact.
Potential trips to Portugal to face either Benfica or Porto had looked more palatable for supporters prior to the draw on Monday morning, while a possible showdown with Sadio Mane's Bayern Munich was also a distinct outcome at one stage.
In the end, though, Liverpool fans got the exact draw they surely didn't want when they were paired with Carlo Ancelotti's European Cup holders. Talk of revenge will inevitably be forthcoming from a defiant Reds supporter-base, both in the immediate aftermath of the draw and the buildup to the first leg, but the reality is that los Blancos have had their number for far too long.
A 3-1 aggregate victory for the Spaniards in 2021 eliminated Liverpool at the quarter-final stage in a season spent behind closed doors, while the 2018 final loss in Kiev by the same scoreline was a particularly difficult one to take on that bewildering night of Loris Karius calamities in the Ukrainian capital.
Recent history has not been kind to the Reds where the Spanish royals are concerned and there is narrative aplenty to this particular skirmish. Too much, as it goes.
There is also the curious statistic that shows Liverpool to have only ever been eliminated from the Champions League on Klopp's watch to teams from the Spanish capital. Real have beaten his team in the finals of 2018 and 2022 and at the quarters in 2021, while their city-rivals, Atletico, were victors at Anfield in 2020.
That, in a way, at least offers Klopp the chance to throw a twist into what is becoming an increasingly lengthy story where Liverpool are concerned in Madrid.
Perez may feel that these sorts of fixtures don't come around with the sort of regularity he would like, but the purveyor of the widely condemned Super League idea has proven he is not entirely in-step with the collective thoughts of football supporters across Europe.
From a purely football point of view, the Reds might be an entirely different proposition in February to what they are currently. An inconsistent campaign domestically leaves them staring up from eighth at a seven-point deficit to fourth place but Sunday's 2-1 win at Tottenham offers hope that the corner has finally been turned.
Beat Southampton on Saturday afternoon and the situation will look a lot healthier than it has at times in recent weeks that have included shock defeats to Nottingham Forest and Leeds. By the time these two meet again, Klopp may also have Luis Diaz, Naby Keita and Diogo Jota fit and raring to go, while the January transfer window offers a real opportunity to significantly bolster the ranks.
Liverpool might just feel they are due one over their Spanish counterparts, but that was also the prevailing feeling prior to the Paris defeat. Perhaps now is finally the time for Klopp to exact a measure of retribution against a team who have broken his heart more than any other in continental action?
And if not, there's always next time. There's always a next time where Real Madrid are concerned for Liverpool just now.
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