Since 2014, Liverpool have had a very poor record against Real Madrid who have beaten them in four of five-six meetings before Saturday’s final. Real have been ruthless in Champions League finals winning seven out of seven before making it eight against Liverpool last weekend. Compare this to Liverpool whose return is two wins in five outings in the Champions League era. The statistics are even worse for their current coach, Juergen Klopp. The German is currently one of the two best coaches in the world alongside Pep Guardiola of Manchester City.
But his record in landing the knock-out blow in the big finals is pathetic. Out of six European finals, he has won only two. In his first final in 2013, he was on the losing end with Borussia Dortmund against Bayern Munich. In his first season at Liverpool, he lost the Europa League final to Sevilla in 2016. This has been followed by the two losses against Real in the Champions League final in 2018 and last Saturday. In contrast, his Real opposite, Carlo Ancelotti has carried the day in four out of five European finals - twice each with AC Milan and Real Madrid with the only setback in 2005 when he lost to Liverpool in the famous Istanbul comeback. During Klopp’s stint at Liverpool, all wins in cup finals have come in extra-time or the lottery of shoot-outs except for the 2019 Champions League. He has beaten Chelsea three times in finals through shoot-outs starting with the European Super Cup in 2019 and this year’s FA and Carabao cups.
The FIFA Club World Cup triumph in 2019 came after Roberto Firmino’s extra-time goal against Brazil’s Flamengo. The upshot is that Klopp’s team is vulnerable to a sucker punch in the finals and no team was better placed to deliver the killer blow this year than Real Madrid. Les Merengues have been the undisputed kings of the sucker punch in the just-ended Champions League season and Liverpool were up against the odds. After limping through the group stage, Real delivered one sucker punch after another to slay the three giants of European football that stood in their way to glory before performing the rites on Liverpool, another titan of the game. Star-studded French aristocrats PSG, defending champions Chelsea, and English powerhouse Manchester City were swept aside through a series of painful and odds-defying sucker punches.
With its poor record in the finals and vulnerability to the underdog’s killer blows on the big occasions, Liverpool needed outside intervention to stop Real from catching them cold. Their task was not made easy by the fact that Real were the chief resurrectionists in the just-ended tournament, rising from the dead and buried to mug their opponents and run away with the prize. Even if Liverpool raced into a lead, they were capable of staging their many miraculous comebacks to emerge tops. Football is a game of thin margins and teams like Liverpool who fail to capitalise during their periods of control in a match live to regret it against masters of escapology like Real Madrid. Klopp and his men did enough to win the final by more than one goal but lacked the football ‘mark of the beast’ that is sometimes needed for such tasks. They were superb in football terms and cannot be faulted on this score. But titles are not won on good football alone. At crucial moments, the beast in a team needs to come out to subdue the prey.
Sometimes, winners must be monsters of the game and that is what separates Real from the rest. In the 2021–2022 Champions League, Real had a momentum seemingly driven by an outside hand so Liverpool stood very little chance. The Real fairy tale run had to have a fitting ending and any other result on Saturday would have been against the script. The manner in which they reached the final means that whatever happened, they were going to beat Liverpool through escapology and that is what happened with the Vinicius Junior’s solitary goal, which was also his only shot on target. They had the mark of the beast to defy the odds while fate and history were on their side.
*The author is a development expert and a former editor at Mmegi
