CAN LIVERPOOL DO THE UNTHINKABLE?

It’s the second Leg of the 2022/2023 UEFA Champions League round of 16, as last year’s finalist Liverpool visits 14 times UEFA Champions League winners Real Madrid as they battle it all out at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu (Madrid). The game which saw Madrid whitewashing Liverpool at their home grounds by 5 goals to 2, will be a hard nut to crack as Liverpool is hoping to overturn the scoreline, an incident which looks impossible.

Madrid won six in their last seven meetings, a run that includes last season’s UCL final which captured the Spanish giants a record-extending 14th European Cup/UCL crown. It would however take a monumental Liverpool effort to ruin Madrid’s 300th UCL game which is the first club to reach this milestone, but the task at hand isn’t completely foreign to Merseyside. They’re one of just four teams to have overturned a UEFA Champions League first-leg deficit of 3+ goals, doing so against Madrid’s fierce rivals Barcelona on route to their sixth European Cup/UCL in 2018/19, though that famous night did come at Anfield.

The Reds will need to emulate a performance likened to their second-leg display in the 2008/09 UCL last 16, where they inflicted what is still Madrid’s heaviest UCL defeat with a 4-0 win. Coming off a 1-0 loss to Premier League strugglers Bournemouth provides the worst possible curtain-raiser for manager Jürgen Klopp though, whose history against Carlo Ancelotti doesn’t serve to inspire either, with 12 games, winning 3, drawing 3 and losing 6. Both teams found the back of the net in 16 of Real Madrid’s last 20 home UEFA Champions League matches.

With Madrid missing the action of David Alaba, Head Coach of Real Madrid, Carlo Ancelotti believes his side must be focused and take away complacency in their quest for victory, While the Reds have to deal with the absence of, Luiz Diaz, Thiago, Gomez, Handerson, Bajectic, Ramsay, Head Coach Jurgen Klopp believes the team has a 1% chance of qualifying above Real Madrid.

By: Herosportgh.com/ Solomon Duah (Sports Atom)