Liverpool host Real Madrid in crunch CL clash
The latest chapter in the Liverpool-Real Madrid rivalry will be written today, when the continental foes collide in the Champions League blockbuster.
Arne Slot’s side are only club in the competition with a perfect 12 points after four matchdays, leaving them 17 places better off than the indifferent holders in the 36-team standings.
It is only fitting that Slot is set to embrace Carlo Ancelotti after joining the Italian in an exclusive managerial club on Sunday, where a Mohamed Salah-inspired Liverpool produced a gritty second-half turnaround to sink Southampton 3-2 in their top vs. bottom battle.
Also looking down on all of their Champions League counterparts, Liverpool’s 4-0 pummelling of Bayer Leverkusen on matchday four means that they are the only side still boasting an unblemished record in the 2024-25 tournament; only in the 2021-22 campaign have they won their first five Champions League matches.
The Reds’ display at St Mary’s was lethargic and leggy at times, but Salah’s everlasting excellence means that Liverpool have now scored at least two goals in each of their last six matches across all competitions, and the time is surely nigh to end their disheartening winless sequence against the holders.
Including the 2018 and 2022 finals, Liverpool are enduring an excruciating eight-game winless run against Real Madrid, who have won seven and drawn one of their last eight meetings with their Merseyside rivals since a 4-0 Anfield annihilation all the way back in 2009.
However, Ancelotti’s troops have already failed two examinations of their title credentials in the new-look competition, October’s surprise 1-0 loss at Lille and the humbling 3-1 home defeat to AC Milan on November 5, where former Blancos striker, Alvaro Morata, returned to haunt his erstwhile employers.
Lying smack-bang in the middle of the UCL rankings, Real’s 18th-placed standing would not even suffice for a seeded path to the playoffs, but the 15-time European champions appear to have flipped a switch since being put to the sword by Milan.
Today’s visitors have won their last two La Liga matches by an aggregate scoreline of 7-0, hitting Osasuna for four without reply before the international break and easing to a 3-0 success over Leganes over the weekend, moving to within four points of a stuttering Barcelona at the top of the rankings.
The holders’ recent memories of playing in front of the Kop are as fond as they could be, though, as they embarrassed Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool 5-2 in the 2022-23 UCL last 16, before completing the formalities with a 1-0 second-leg success in the Spanish capital.
Slot has already conceded that rumoured Real target, Alexander-Arnold, is the only member of the quartet who might be in with a chance of coming back on Wednesday, where a couple of changes will no doubt be in store after a slightly worrying overall display at St Mary’s.
From boosts to blows, Real Madrid will seemingly have to cope without Brazilian wing wizard, Vinicius Junior, for the game, as the club revealed on Monday morning that he had suffered a hamstring injury in the Leganes victory without giving a recovery timeframe.
—Sportsmole