Reds hitting all the right notes
FEELING FINE WITH SOME HELP FROM THE BEATLES
As Liverpool fans all around Anfield celebrated their Champions League semifinal, first leg victory over Villarreal, it was fitting they choose a Beatles song to serenade the mastermind of their bid for football immortality.
In recent months, Juergen Klopp has been feted by supporters who have turned the Beatles’ I feel fine into a song of praise for the Liverpool manager.
“Juergen said to me, you know. We’ll win the Premier League, you know. He said so. I’m in love with him and I feel fine,” they chant from the Kop.
Never has the work of Merseyside’s most famous musical sons been more appropriate than on Wednesday.
Liverpool won 2-0 against a Villarreal team nicknamed the “Yellow Submarine” since the 1960s when the Spanish club’s fans used the Beatles song in tribute to their yellow shirts.
Villarreal tried to frustrate Liverpool with a defensive gameplan – a formula that had earned them shock wins over Juventus and Bayern Munich – but Klopp’s men torpedoed them with a patient display.
It took 53 minutes to break down Villarreal’s rearguard action, when Jordan Henderson’s cross deflected off Pervis Estupinan and looped into the net.
Two minutes later, Sadio Mane doubled Liverpool’s lead to put them in pole position to reach the Champions League final for a third time in five seasons.
Yet the Reds have more than a seventh European Cup triumph, and second of Klopp’s reign, in their sights.
They are chasing an unprecedented quadruple.
No English team has ever won all four major trophies in one season, not even Arsenal’s 2004 ‘Invincibles’ or Manchester United’s 1999 treble winners.
For Liverpool, who have already won this season’s League Cup, that is the historic goal now.
They sit one point behind Premier League leaders Manchester City with five games left and face Chelsea in the FA Cup final in May.
Winning a quadruple would establish them as the greatest of all generations, better even than the 1988 vintage of John Barnes and Peter Beardsley and the late 1970s and early ‘80s crop of Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness.
Klopp’s team are hitting all the right notes, the only question now is whether they will feel fine with their trophy haul at the end of the season.