Paul Gorst speaks to former Liverpool and Real Madrid midfielder Steve McManaman, as well as Spanish football expert Rob Palmer ahead of tonight’s big Champions League match at Anfield
If few clubs can match Liverpool’s storied and romantic history in the European Cup, then Real Madrid are part of an even more select number who can boast a more impressive legacy. Fifteen times champions of Europe, Los Blancos have furnished their already unrivalled record considerably over the last ten years of Champions League action. Having taken 12 years to finally reach ‘la Decima’ – their 10th triumph – in 2014, the La Liga giants have had a stranglehold on the continent’s premier club competition since, winning it six times in the last 10 years.
Two of those finals, of course, have come against the Reds, with Jurgen Klopp’s side beaten in Kiev in 2018 and then Paris in 2022 in games that, in many ways, bookended the story of his great Liverpool team during that period.
If the loss in Ukraine six years ago was just the start for a side that went on to lift every top-level trophy under Klopp, then the 1-0 reverse at the Stade de France four years later was the beginning of the end for what was largely still that same squad.
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Liverpool are winless in eight games against their Anfield visitors on Wednesday night but there has been less white-shirted surety about the Spaniards’ results in the revamped Champions League this time around. Sitting in a lowly 21st heading into Wednesday’s game, the Reds, in contrast, have the chance to regain top spot and make it five wins from as many games for Arne Slot, who has started life at the club in stunning style.
“He’s been incredible to be honest,” Steve McManaman, who starred for both clubs, tells the ECHO. “But the squad he inherited was very good and then some of the players are a year older in terms of experience at the football club, so it wasn’t a surprise that they started but such a record, 16 from 18 and then the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup, I think that has exceeding everyone’s expectations to be honest. He has done a fantastic job.
“I think it goes without saying how good the squad (Slot inherited) was. Looking back to April time and Liverpool were in all four competitions, they squad was very strong, the club was in a healthy position, (Dominik) Szoboszlai, (Alexis) Mac Allister are now a year older, some of the younger players are more experienced and of course you need a bit of luck and to keep players fit but Liverpool have had that to a certain extent. Alisson (Becker) has been out but (Caoimhin) Kelleher is superb in his own right.”
With 16 wins from his opening 18 fixtures, Slot’s team have the chance to restore the Champions League lead this week with victory over Madrid before Sunday’s clash with Manchester City presents them with the opportunity to go a whopping – and scarcely believable – 11 points clear of Pep Guardiola’s embattled side this weekend in the Premier League. Such form was enough for Bayer Leverkusen boss Xabi Alonso to label his former club as Europe’s finest team earlier this month, 24 hours before the Bundesliga champions were beaten 4-0 to emphatically back up their coach’s assertion.
McManaman says: “I think Xabi had a point and when you look at it in terms of sheer performances, you look across the leagues and the strength of them, Liverpool are the strongest team with the best results. The Premier League is better than Serie A, better than Bayern (Munich), Napoli, whoever. Of course Xabi might say that with Xabi being who he is but Liverpool’s form, they have been the standout in the Champions League.”
After so many disheartening and humbling defeats has persisted for a number of years, Reds fans will be desperate to change the narrative, having seen two giants of the world game meet as many as eight times in the last 10 years. Seven defeats and one sleepy, surreal goalless draw, played out in an empty Anfield for the second leg of a Champions League quarter-final in 2021, means the six-time holders have little recent history on their side on Wednesday.
“Those sorts of records didn’t really stick in our minds as players and you can’t look at Real Madrid teams of the past because the teams are always changing,” McManaman counters. “So you look at how many started the last time they played and who starts tonight, maybe four or five?
“Both teams are in different shapes now to what it was in 2023, they lost 5-2 at home and then the awful 1-0 in Madrid, it was an awful game. They are completely different animals now, the pair of them. So I wouldn’t take that form into account at all.
“The pressure cranks up (when Real Madrid aren’t winning) because when they win, (the Spanish media) go crazy. They won the Super Cup (last season) and the league by a country mile and the Champions League, then Spain win the Euros. So you can imagine how buoyant they were in the summer and then they bring in Kylian (Mbappe) on a free and then Endrick, who they think is going to be a superstar, so there was the expectation that they were going to go to the next level.
“We all know it is very difficult to do that and a few injuries can knock you back. So losing the game in the manner they lost it, wasn’t very good at all. People’s stats haven’t been good enough and the press have got right into it all. So they needed to win against Osasuna last week and they did, they played well, but again they got a couple of injuries and that didn’t help at all because they are running out of defenders. So the pressure is ramped up.
“They come to Anfield and it is ramped up even further because they are playing the best team in Europe at the moment on paper, the team who are top of the Champions League standings. So, of course, the pressure goes up even further and it is an incredibly difficult game under the lights, away at Anfield.”
Well beaten in the Clasico with Barcelona last month, 4-0 at home, before an AC Milan who Liverpool beat in match-day one in the San Siro, also triumphed at the Bernabeu 3-1, it’s fair to say Carlo Ancelotti’s side are yet to hit the heights of last season so far.
An injury crisis has been lamentable, while the tactical framework to enable France superstar Mbappe to flourish alongside the likes of Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham is still being figured out. On top of that, the club drew widespread mocking recently over their furious reaction to Man City’s Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or over Brazil star Vinicius, who had been widely tipped to lift the trophy handed out to the player voted as the world’s best.
“It’s generally a player from La Liga who wins it and it is a major honour over here and I think they had been tipped off that Vinicius was going to win it,” says La Liga expert Rob Palmer. “So on their own TV station, they planned a full day of specials and it’s not like in England, where everything is on Sky or TNT.
“In Spain they spent 1.8bn (Euros) on the contract and they don’t allow any cameras or anyone to work in the stadium until 10 minutes before kick-off, so they dominate those rights. So it was peacocking and then finding out it wasn’t their man, they were very upset. They are like royalty here and they take it all very seriously.”
Vinicius, as was confirmed on Monday, has become the latest on the shelf for Los Blancos, meaning Mbappe might revert to his more familiar left side position and Bellingham could reprise the false 9 role he relished last season having played much of the campaign so far as a more orthodox central midfielder.
Palmer adds: “Bellingham is playing where he played for Dortmund and now it’s almost a Steven Gerrard position as an auxiliary striker. It’s like an old Gerrard or Bryan Robson behind role and he had (Aurelien) Tchouameni and Toni Kroos behind him last season but now Kroos has gone and Tchouameni is having to fill in in defence, so Bellingham is playing more of a kind of natural midfield position. The No.5 is more of a true number on his back now.”
McManaman says: “They have only lost one game but they lost the Clasico easily really, they were not very good at all against Barcelona and they have lost two in the Champions League too. Eder Militao has done his cruciate, so he’s out, David Alaba too. Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has done his as well and these injuries are happening more and more frequently and it’s really quite sad.
“Dani Carvajal is out for the year as well, so they have had their injuries and internal problems for that and it’s been decimating for them. And they need a result at Anfield because they have a difficult away game at Atalanta, so they have their own problems in the Champions League. The Champions League, they can’t afford to lose many more games.”
Palmer, who has covered the fortunes of Real Madrid closely for well over two decades, adds: “They are a slightly diluted version of who Liverpool faced in recent years. I hate the word ‘crisis’ but they are a club who are absolutely stretched at the moment.
“I think this is the best chance that Liverpool will have had against Real Madrid for a number of years. It’s still a half decent Madrid team at the XI, it’s just they might be a bit misshapen. Real Madrid are not going to look at it and (worry) and there won’t be any major risks and it will be a familiar 11.
“There is a belief (in Madrid) that as the season goes on they will come good, I think they feel if they can get through the winter and then later in the season they will get half a dozen or so players back. I can’t see them recruiting as they tend not to. If they did that there wouldn’t be too much wrong with them but they have just been hit by the most crucial players at the wrong time in such a short space of time.”
If Liverpool really do ‘owe Real Madrid one’, as many supporters making their way to Anfield will insist, they may never have a better chance of doing just that tonight.
