Liverpool in final thanks to courageous brand of flawed but unflinching football

JURGEN KLOPP usually takes a scattergun approach to answering the questions of journalists, bombarding his interrogator with so many words that dictaphone batteries expire and translators need new notepads. Yet a telling line often lies among the mass of detail, and so it was before this semifinal.

“Football is as in life,” he told those who had dared to venture that Liverpool could relinquish their 5-2 first-leg lead over Roma and fail to reach next month’s Kiev final. “If you are not ready to lose, you cannot win.”

Liverpool’s build-up to this second leg could only be described as difficult. And then, cutting all those inconveniences down into insignificance, was the wellbeing of Sean Cox, the Liverpool supporter left in a medically-induced coma by Roman ultras last week.

The 53-year-old’s condition more than cast a cloud over the occasion, lacing the streets around the Stadio Olimpico with a palpable menace.

Yet plenty of Cox’s counterparts – approximately 5,000 travelling supporters – took heed of the warnings, followed the safety instructions and still arrived in the Eternal City intent on backing a group of players they are gradually falling in love with.

It was a decision that required a degree of courage, and courage that deserved to be reflected out on the pitch.

In the circumstances it would have been understandable if Klopp had instructed his players to play tight, composed football and soak up the pressure that Roma would inevitably exert.

Another team you may have heard of, one slightly more successful than Liverpool of late, tried to do just that in this stadium recently.

An overlooked aspect of Barcelona’s display in that remarkable quarterfinal was that Ernesto Valverde took a passive, reactive, “have-whatwe-hold” approach, confident that the natural superiority of La Liga’s champions would be enough to overcome Serie A also-runs.

Yet the talents at Barcelona’s disposal made their performance particularly craven, and it was dealt with a fair punishment.

Would Liverpool do the same? It would be naive to even suggest so.

Klopp’s side were forced to play deep given the nature of the occasion but they accepted every opportunity to break, especially in a breathless first half. Even after taking a lead on the night inside nine minutes, there was no let-up.

Oceans of space were afforded to a Roma team that needed goals and eventually found them, but not enough. Had Liverpool not sought to pounce in those opening stages, the Italian would be the ones travelling to Kiev.

But the bravery was not only shown at the frontline, but also at the rear.

There was Andrew Robertson driving up the pitch in search of an assist then driving back down it with equal endeavour to prevent one.

There was the slight Sadio Mane rising for high and hungup aerial balls that he was never likely to win, usually being clattered underneath his marker, but the next time rising again.

There was Roberto Firmino seeming like three Roberto Firminos across the breadth of the pitch any time his teammates were on the back foot.

The nerve slipped a little in the second half but the ideals, still, were not compromised.

This is not football characterised by fear, doubling down on defensive strengths in order to mitigate offensive weakness. Nor is it total dominance, or an attempt at such scientific superiority that defeat becomes unthinkable, if no less inevitable.

Instead, it is flawed but unflinching, sometimes imprecise and sometimes incisive, always a spectacle. If you are not ready to lose, you cannot win.

To paraphrase the late playwright Arnold Wesker, Klopp’s Liverpool have shown the courage to go after a utopia and survive their failures.

It is that courage that has brought them within 90 minutes plus stoppage time of what this club, since 1977, has considered its utopia: lifting the European Cup. – The Independent