Liverpool enter the match at Anfield against their Spanish guest Villarreal in the first leg of Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final, with the understanding that a mistake is forbidden in front of a championship dark horse that seeks to topple another continental giant.
In their quest to create a historic quartet this season, Liverpool faces Italian club Juventus and German champions Bayern Munich in eight finals and quarter-finals respectively.
German coach Jurgen Klopp’s side are coming to the end of a fiery season, just one point behind Manchester City, in a fierce battle for the league title with five stages to go and have reached the Fed Cup final, where he will face Chelsea after as the expense of the latter won the League Cup title earlier in the season.
Liverpool are looking to keep going and reach the final for the first time since 2019, when they won their sixth title at the expense of fellow countryman Tottenham Hotspur.
As for Villarreal, it has achieved its best result in continental competitions, having also reached the semi-finals in the 2005-2006 season before losing to Arsenal.
Villarreal proved last year’s Europa League win at Manchester United’s expense was no fluke, led by competition specialist Unai Emery, who has won the title four times (three of them in a row with Sevilla since 2014). to 2016).
The Spanish team is still on the right track to repeat Porto’s extraordinary achievement under José Mourinho, who won the Champions League in 2004, a year after winning the FA Cup (now the Europa League).
And the two teams have previously met only twice on the continent, in the Europa League semi-finals in the 2015-2016 season, when Klopp-led Liverpool made up a 0-1 gap in a row in Spain to win 3-0 at Anfield before lose in the final to Sevilla and specifically Emery (1–3) in Basel, Switzerland.
