CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL COUNTDOWN Lovren: Our style gives us the edge

DEJAN LOVREN insists Liverpool have played the best football seen in this season’s Champions League but says it will count for nothing if they do not beat Real Madrid on Saturday.

While Liverpool have electrified the competition, 12-time champions Real have been workmanlike.

“When you look back two years ago, Real Madrid really deserved to win the Champions League, but when I look now to see who plays better, it’s Liverpool,” he said.

“Real won against Juve and they won against Bayern Munich with some decisions that you can talk about but in the end they are in the final.

“As some of their players have said, they don’t care how they got there, the most important thing is that they got there. And now you don’t need to play the most beautiful football in the final, you just need to win it.”

Lovren was reminded this week of the last time he faced Real Madrid in a Liverpool shirt, in October 2014 when the Spanish side hit them with a three-goal blitz in 19 first-half minutes.

It was a painful lesson for Liverpool to take on their return to Champions League action, but Lovren says there is no such gulf in class now.

“The only thing that is similar to that night is the name Liverpool,” he said. “When you look at the players and everything, we have changed a lot.

“I think only me and Jordan Henderson are the only players left.

“I’m so much more confident in the team now than I was back then. I feel the team are ready to battle against every team in the world.

“When you look around the dressing room into their eyes – the young lads, the experienced lads – the eyes are full of confidence.

“So we improved from that moment on. And we improved a lot.

“Maybe they are used to this team [from 2014] and they look at images from that game but we are totally different now.”

For Lovren too, there has been a significant shift.

Under Jurgen Klopp the Croatian has gone from a player the boss did not appear to trust to one of the first names on his team sheet.

Saturday’s final will be the culmination of a lifetime battling against the doubters. This week Lovren retold the story of how when he was a 10-year-old in Karlovac near Zagreb – having recently returned after seven years in Germany escaping the Bosnian conflict – he scrawled on his desk in his room, “One day I’ll be one of the best defenders in the world”.

Saturday will go a long way to proving the prophecy right if he can keep out Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I struggled a lot in my life from day one and you know there is belief within me and it will never go from me,” added Lovren.

“And it really was always there from when I was young.

“It has always been there and especially now. I know how hard I worked, and as a team how hard we worked, to achieve this.”