Anybody reading this will have no doubt watched the first leg of the Champions League quarter final between Real Madrid and Liverpool. Before I go into what went wrong for Liverpool, it is worth giving Real Madrid the praise that they deserve. It really doesn’t matter how poor your opposition play, if you cannot respond by exploiting their faults on the night, you will not get your rewards. Liverpool were poor, and Real Madrid made the most of that with their solid midfield winning the battle in the middle of the park, and excellent positioning and movement of their wide attacking players Marco Asensio and Vinicius Junior.
Klopp surprised everybody who was waiting to see the lineup, by dropping Thiago Alcantara to the bench and playing Naby Keita in his place. I can understand the thinking behind this, but it didn’t work out as planned. Real Madrid’s midfield three of Casemiro, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, is very similar to how Liverpool’s own midfield operate when Jordan Henderson is fit. Lot’s of hard work and good passing; a solid defensive midfielder and plenty of bite and excellent pressing ability. Without Jordan Henderson fit to play, it was always going to be a difficult test to match those three. When Naby Keita has a good game, which is sadly become less a certain with each match that he plays, he is a fantastic dribbler of of the ball and can just float past players with so much ease. It has been quite a while since I have seen him able to do this, and of course, he needs the ball to be able to do it, which he saw very little of, before being substituted late in the first half. So I can see why Klopp took a chance on him, to add something a little different, but we ended up playing like we only had two in midfield with Keita either being nowhere near the ball, or misplacing 5 yard passes in Liverpool’s own half.
In the second leg, working out how to combat Real’s midfield three is going to be key to getting a result. Klopp has already played his Keita shaped trump card with no effect and I cannot see Keita playing any part of the second leg. The obvious three are Fabinho, Wijnaldum and Thiago, but that has already bared very little fruit and those three played most of the first leg tie and struggled against the Madrid three. With Henderson pretty much certain not to have recovered, Klopp needs to be sure to pick the right three players to win that battle. Apart from the three that started the second half, Klopp also has Curtis Jones, James Milner, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Xherdan Shaqiri to call upon. Of the latter two, I feel that Ox is too short of match fitness to be a match for Kroos and Modric, and Shaqiri, while often a wildcard capable of moments of magic, I think they are too seldom to give him a starting birth against such a strong opposing midfield. Klopp has also has reservations about Shaqiri’s workrate, but that element of his game does seem to have improved as of late.
That leaves James Milner and Curtis Jones. I would not be surprised to see Milner start the second leg. He has the ability to both slow down and speed up play as and when we require it; his experience in such high stakes games would be a very valuable asset. He wouldn’t need to last the 90 minutes, however I have no doubts about his fitness, but it would then beg the question of who would drop to the bench to facilitate the vice-captain’s inclusion.
Real Madrid lie in third in La Liga, 3 points behind leaders Atletico Madrid and 2 points behind Barcelona, against whom they meet with in the world famous El Classico this Saturday evening. They may already feel that they have one foot in the Champions League semi finals and throw everything into this weekend’s crunch match which they must win to have any chance of staying in the title race. Both Sergio Ramos and Rafael Varane will be missing for that match, as well as the return leg at Anfield next Wednesday.
While Liverpool need goals next week, the need for a clean sheet cannot be overemphasised. A score-line of 2-0 to Liverpool will be enough to take them through to semi finals on away goals. Concede however, and Liverpool need 3 goals just to take it the match to extra time and penalties. Concede two, and it is surely game over, with Liverpool needing to score 5 goals to secure passage to the next round.
Liverpool fans from across the globe will be watching with hope that Salah, Mane and co. can make it happen again. We were worse off two years ago, having to come back from 0-3 down against Barcelona. If we had fans in the stadium as our 12th man, I would fully expect Klopp’s boys to pull that feat off again – without that advantage though, this task is going to be a difficult one.