Amid the rituals of the build-up to the Champions League final, routine now to Liverpool’s players as they prepare for their third in five seasons, there was at least one unfamiliar sight: Jürgen Klopp apparently lost for words in a press conference.
A German journalist had noted that this final should have been taking place in Saint Petersburg, until Uefa moved the game to Paris in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - the country where Klopp’s Liverpool played their first Champions League final in 2018. Did Klopp think much about the war, or is there no time for him to think about anything except football?
Klopp admitted that the final had been dominating his thoughts this week, and from the length of the pause that followed it was clear that he hadn’t expected to be asked to speak about the war. But as he tells his players every day, it’s all about how you react. So after giving it some thought, he reacted.
“That the game still happens and that it’s not in St Petersburg maybe is exactly the message Russia should get: life goes on, even when you try to destroy it. We play this final for all the people, but as well for the people of Ukraine. We do it for you, 100 per cent.”
The questions in Paris kept circling back to Kyiv four years ago, when Liverpool lost 3-1 to Real Madrid. Mo Salah has talked about his desire for revenge, but Klopp made his peace with that defeat long ago. “The circumstances hit us. We couldn’t react. We couldn’t react because it was a long season, we arrived pretty much on three wheels. Players came back from injuries, key players, our goalie had a concussion - it was proven afterwards, not during - and so things happened.”
Klopp radiated the conviction that on Saturday Liverpool, boosted by the return to fitness of Fabinho and Thiago, will put up a far more formidable challenge. “I want to be us in this game, being completely ourselves. If we are on the top of our game we are difficult to play, really difficult to play. That’s my only concern at this moment.”
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What impressed you about Klopp and the Liverpool full backs, Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold, was their sense of calm. Alexander-Arnold knows that one of Madrid’s main attacking tactics will be to target the space behind him with quick balls for their flying left winger, Vinícius. The combination of Toni Kroos’s passes and Vinícius’s sprints gave Alexander-Arnold one of the hardest nights of his career when Madrid beat Liverpool 3-1 in last season’s quarter-final.
Asked how he felt about the prospect of reliving that humiliation, he seemed utterly serene. “Vinícius is an outstanding player. He’s an exciting player to watch. But we have a job to do - as individuals, as a collective, as a group - to go out there and win. The individual battles will be part of that, but it’s a team game. The team wins at the end of the day.”
Carlo Ancelotti is expert in projecting an air of calm, but this has not been one of the calmer weeks in the history of Real Madrid. Liverpool’s opponents have been struggling to process their historic jilting by Kylian Mbappé, the intended successor to Cristiano Ronaldo, whom they have been trying to sign for 10 years.
From Madrid’s perspective, what Mbappé has done is incomprehensible. It simply does not compute. Madrid’s self-image is that they are the biggest, the best, the greatest, the most glorious, the apex predator, the acknowledged pinnacle, the club to whom no player ever says no. Mbappé has demolished that. His refusal to sign presents Madrid with more than just a football problem. It strikes at the core of their self-esteem and confronts them with evidence of their relative decline.
Their current era of Champions League domination goes back to 1998, when Predrag Mijatović’s goal defeated Juventus in Amsterdam: if they win on Saturday night it will be eight titles in 24 years. But before then there were 30 years in which Madrid was a football backwater. Three decades of European campaigns that produced just a couple of Uefa Cups. Is it possible that Madrid could again regress towards such mediocrity?
Madrid’s predicament resonates with the growing status anxiety of the Spanish game. Since the Cruyff Dream Team era at Barcelona, La Liga has been home to the world’s greatest players, defying the greater economic power of the Premier League. Up-and-coming talents like Cesc Fábregas, Fernando Torres, David Silva and Sergio Agüero moved from Spain to England, but the biggest stars only ever went in the opposite direction: David Beckham, Michael Owen, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Luis Suárez, Philippe Coutinho, Eden Hazard.
Now the best young players are signing for petrodollar-funded clubs in other leagues, and Madrid face an identity crisis. The Champions League has provided an outlet for catharsis. Having defeated the petro-clubs in the previous rounds, they have the chance to reassert their alpha credentials by putting Liverpool in their place. The off-field psychodrama will bring extra motivation, and also extra pressure.
Liverpool, too, may face upheaval after the final, with persistent rumours that Sadio Mané is leaving for Bayern coming up in the press conference. “Sadio’s in the shape of his life,” said Klopp. “It’s a joy to watch him in training and in the games. It’s not the first time in my career that before decisive games, Bayern Munich rumours are coming up.”
Klopp was probably referring back to 2013, when he was the coach at Dortmund. Two days before Dortmund were due to play a Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid, the news somehow leaked out that Bayern were signing Dortmund’s best young player, Mario Götze. A bad memory, but maybe a good omen: Dortmund hammered Madrid 4-1.
