City set for special welcome at atmospheric Anfield
It wouldn't be a big European night at Anfield if there wasn't a special welcome planned for the visiting team. Just ask John Terry. "I walked out into that cauldron and heard that singing and saw that passion," the former Chelsea captain wrote in his autobiography about the team's trip to play Liverpool in the 2005 Champions League semifinals. "The hairs on my arms were standing up." Just ask Villarreal, too. Two years ago, ahead of a Europa League semifinal match, the Villarreal team bus was greeted with flares, missiles and smoke bombs as it made its way through the narrow streets around Anfield.
Liverpool won on both occasions. And while the players on the field have a more important role, the power of the fans should not be underestimated.
Manchester City might find this out today for the first leg of its Champions League semifinal against Liverpool.
Not long after the draw was made for the richly anticipated all-English last-eight encounter, a poster was distributed by some Liverpool fans on Twitter, entitled: "Coach Greeting."
"Bring your flares and flags. Banners and bangers. Pints and pyros," it urged. Below, a message in bold read: "We're going to show them exactly what money can't buy."
It was retweeted by Redmen TV, an influential Liverpool fan group. For City's players, it promises to be quite the welcome.
"It's wonderful, it's great, it shows everything, it shows the passion," Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp said yesterday, when asked about the fans greeting the teams to the stadium. "As long as it happens in a legal way, I'm completely fine with it. I like it.
"I'm not the guy who organized it. I have nothing to do with that."
Liverpool is a five-time European champion. City has never won Europe's biggest prize, or even reached the final.
European nights at Anfield have gone down in history. City sometimes don't fill its Etihad Stadium for big Champions League games and its fans ritually jeer UEFA's Champions League anthem because of punishments meted out by the organization for breaching financial fair play rules.
Klopp is wary of relying too much on history to help Liverpool through to the semifinals, despite the aura around the club for occasions like these.
"This club is already full of history and we have to write our own history," Klopp said. "I meet people over the days and they can tell me each goal Liverpool scored 37 years ago in the 56th minute.
"But this team, we need to be proud of our history but we need to create our own history. I did that a lot at my former teams ... at one point you need to do your own things."