EXTRA MOTIVATION
This is MORE than just a match... Kop want payback for Ramos’ brutal KO of Salah in 2018
THE Champions League has thrown up its fair share of Final drama down the years.
But few of those showcase occasions have provided many more story-lines than Kyiv in 2018.
On the big Euro nights you need Lady Luck and key players to stand up and be counted.
What you don’t need is a horror show from your goalkeeper and a game-ending injury to your goalscoring talisman.
Sadly for Liverpool, that was the scenario that unfolded with Loris Karius and Mo Salah taking centre stage for all the wrong reasons.
Liverpool needed the football gods to smile on them against the European royalty of Real Madrid, but it all unravelled for Liverpool as they chased a sixth European Cup triumph.
Madrid’s Galacticos – Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale – were hunting their own place in history with a 13th crown at stake.
For Liverpool, though, it proved to be the unluckiest of nights – and, four
years on, the repercussions still reverberate around the club.
Salah had arrived into the Final with 44 goals under his belt for the Reds that season.
He had also notched up a third of all the Euro goals scored by Jurgen Klopp’s side on the way to the final.
It meant the Egyptian King carried the expectation of every Liverpool fan in Kyiv.
But what transpired in the Olimpiyskiy Stadium was a nightmare no one at Anfield could have predicted.
Madrid defender and captain Sergio Ramos was used to playing the villain’s role, with a robust style that takes no prisoners.
And he became Public Enemy No.1 for Kop fans after wrestling Salah to the ground and injuring his shoulder 25 minutes into the final, with Liverpool shading the game.
Initially, Salah carried on. But the striker could not continue and tearfully left the field, with Ronaldo offering consoling words as he left.
With their main man gone, Liverpool’s heads were scrambled.
Fans and pundits analysed whether it was a bad-luck accident – or a deliberate act of malice by dark arts expert Ramos.
To this day, it is the latter theory that abounds, with Ramos the subject of death threats even before the game reached half-time.
Despite suffering their own blow of losing defender Dani Carvajal, six minutes after Salah’s exit, Madrid took control of the game.
Real boss Zinedine Zidane thought Benzema had scored just before halftime after Ronaldo’s header had been well saved by Karius, but the offside whistle was blown by Serbian referee Milorad
Mazic.
Moments after the restart, Isco hit the bar as the
Spaniards edged closer to the opening goal.
It quickly
followed – and will such a risky play and stuck out a boot. haunt Karius, Klopp To Liverpool’s horror, the striker and the Kop for ever. connected with the ball, which rolled
The Liverpool keeper into the net, stunning Klopp’s team. suicidally tried to play Although Sadio Mane equalised out with an underarm soon after with clever opportunism, throw to the arrival of Bale, after 61 minutes, defender Dejan was a turning point.
Lovren, but Three minutes after his entry, the Benzema was Welsh star scored arguably the
way too close for greatest Champions League goal of BLUNDERS Kop keeper Loris Karius had a shocker in the final
all time, a spectacular, acrobatic bicycle kick.
But Liverpool’s pain wasn’t over. After Mane had struck a post, on 70 minutes, and, with time running out, Bale lined up a 30-yarder which Karius easily had covered.
Somehow the ball squirmed from his grasp and into the net for his second howler of the night.
The final whistle brought delirium for Real and their third successive
Champions League crown, while Klopp looked dazed after losing his sixth consecutive final.
Later that summer, Roma keeper Alisson arrived in a £66.8million deal, with Karius packed off on loan to Besiktas, his Anfield career over.
Salah recovered from his wrestle with Ramos to play in the World Cup – and now he will be desperate for revenge against the Spanish giants in Paris on Saturday night.