Champions League Final: Mohamed Salah’s quest for revenge against Real Madrid

 

A lot has gone Liverpool’s way since they lost the Champions League final to Real Madrid in 2018. If anything, that night in Kyiv was a sign to the rest of Europe of better things to come from the Reds — as they showed glimpses of a good side, but certainly weren’t the fine-tuned, heavy metal unit they are now.

That game obviously ended in disappointed for Jürgen Klopp’s side, with Loris Karius’ huge mistake for Karim Benzema’s opening goal of the match earning the German goalkeeper a place on football’s biggest blunders reels for the rest of eternity perhaps.

But when Liverpool’s talisman Mohamed Salah was forced to be subbed off in the first half after a coming together with Sergio Ramos (pictured above), it always felt like it wasn’t going to be the Reds’ night in the Ukrainian capital — and Karius’ two mistakes, the second failing to stop a long-distance shot from Gareth Bale, were testament to that.

As we said at the start though, Liverpool have transformed into a different beast entirely since then — they are more experienced and are now the unsurprising favourites to win the showpiece match in the Champions League final betting.

The Reds lifted their sixth European Cup just 12 months later, beating their Premier League rivals Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 at the Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid, and their first top flight title in 30 years followed the season after that.

With so much success since that night in Kyiv, you’d have thought that 3-1 defeat would be a distant memory for all those involved with Liverpool almost four years on. But Salah is not willing to forgive and forget ahead of yet another Champions League final against Los Blancos at the Stade de France in Paris on May 28^th — even if the culprit has since moved on to pastures new at Paris Saint-Germain.

It is not the injury he sustained that night that Salah wants revenge for though. No, given his winning mentality, it is the defeat and that alone that the ‘Egyptian King’ wants to avenge.

“Yeah, I want to play Madrid,” Salah said after his side’s 5-2 aggregate win over Villarreal in the semi-finals of the tournament.

“But I have to be honest City is a really tough team, we played against them a few times this season but if you asked me personally, I would prefer Madrid.”

“Because we lost in the final to them… so I want to play against them and hopefully win it from them as well.”

Sometimes in football, clubs use quotes and post-match interviews to motivate them ahead of big matches, and there’s no doubt the Real Madrid team will have been made well aware of Salah’s eagerness for retribution. But stopping him from getting that retaliation in the French capital will be another thing entirely.

Indeed, the 29-year-old arguably hasn’t racked up the kind of numbers he would have liked since enjoying a decent group stage — scoring seven goals in six games. In fact, he hasn’t found the back of the net since bagging Liverpool’s second in their 2-0 win over Inter Milan at the San Siro in the first leg of their round of 16 match.

His assist in the 2-0 win over Villarreal at Anfield was actually his first goal contribution in the Champions League in over 190 minutes of action, which is well off the pace of his usual goal/assist ratio, but he grabbed another assist in the away leg — crucially setting up Fabinho for Liverpool’s first goal as they inspired a come back from 2-0 down to win 3-2.

Salah will be well up for the final though, and it would be no surprise to see the Egyptian hold the famous big-eared trophy above his head for a second time when the referee blows the final whistle at the Stade de France later this month!