sport news DOMINIC KING: Jurgen Klopp loves the chance football gives to strike back trends now
Jurgen Klopp sat alone with his thoughts, a big screen on with the volume down, to reacquaint himself with the pain. It was, he said with a grimace, as acute as he remembered.
The fallout from last season's Champions League final has been dominated by the disgrace that UEFA and the French authorities allowed to happen outside the Stade de France, so much so that the game itself has barely been mentioned.
Liverpool's manager would have been happy if he had never watched it again, but circumstances forced his hand. And what Klopp realised on second viewing, to his great frustration, is that this was one that got away.
'It was proper torture as we played a good game and could have won,' Klopp said forlornly. 'That's the decisive word — could — because they scored and we didn't. The mood in the stadium was not for watching a game. This day should have been completely different.
'What held us a little back was the fact it was a final. We did not take enough risks in little moments, we were not adventurous enough, we were super protective because of the counter-attack threat — rightly so, as we saw with the goal.
Jurgen Klopp has endured the pain of watching last season's Champions League final loss back
The Liverpool manager relishes the chance football gives for revenge - and has urged his side to bring a spark on Tuesday
'Analysis is always super easy, especially a year later. But when I watched it back, there was a feeling of here and there, with an extra spark, we could have made this thing happen.'
There is a theory that Liverpool have never truly recovered from that night, when it felt as if Thibaut Courtois was not so much a goalkeeper but an octopus, with arms unfurling and stretching in every direction to keep out the danger posed by Mo Salah and Sadio Mane.
One of the aspects Klopp loves about football, though, is the constant potential — as he puts it — to strike back. Real have been a thorn in his side during his Anfield tenure, leaving him tearful on a couple of occasions and exasperated following a quarter-final elimination two years ago.
But this is a new season and his eyes lit up when it was put to him that taking Real on in front of a partisan home crowd is something he has wanted for five years, ever since the night in Kyiv of Loris Karius and Gareth Bale, Salah and Sergio Ramos.
