01062019 - APC lawmakers move against party

44 — SATURDAY Vanguard, JUNE 1, 2019
UCL final: African stars
take centre stage
The power of African football
will be on display today, when
Liverpool take on Tottenham Hotspur
in the final of the UEFA
Champions League (UCL), the
world’s most prestigious club
competition.
The match billed for Atletico
Madrid’s 67,000-capacity Wanda
Metropolitano Stadium and
scheduled for live broadcast on all
DStv packages as well as GOtv
Max and Plus packages, will see
Africa’s biggest soccer exports on
both sides.
Liverpool boast the trio of Egypt’s
Mohamed ‘Mo’ Salah, Senegal’s
Sadio Mane and Cameroon’s Joel
Matip, who will lead the charge
for what will be the Reds’ sixth
victory in the competition and the
Liverpool in
Champions
League
Liverpool have reached the final
of the Champions League (or
European Cup as it was previously
known) a total of eight times,
emerging victorious on five occasions.
They were in last year’s final
but lost to a Cristiano Ronaldo-inspired
Real Madrid side.
That makes them one of the most
successful teams in the history of
the competition, putting them level
with Bayern Munich and Barcelona
in terms of titles won. Only
AC Milan (seven) and Real Madrid
(12) can claim to be more successful
than the English club.
In a British context they are the
undisputed European kings,
boasting two more titles than bitter
rivals Manchester United and
three more than Nottingham Forest.
The Reds’ first ever European
title came in 1977 when they defeated
Borussia Monchengladbach
in Rome and they defended
the title the following year by overcoming
Club Brugge in Wembley.
Who wins 2018/
Champions Leag
Liverpool: Starting line-up
against Tottenham (4-3-3)
• Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk,
Robertson, Fabinho, Henderson, Wijnaldum,
Mane, Salah, Firmino
Jurgen Klopp will be able to
call upon a near fully fit squad
for Liverpool’s Champions
League final meeting with
Tottenham.
Naby Keita is set to be the only
absentee for the Reds, having
failed to recover from an adductor
injury he sustained during the
semi-final first-leg defeat to
Barcelona.
Klopp revealed that the Guinean
has “no chance” of featuring in
Madrid, though fears he will also
miss the Africa Cup of Nations
have eased of late.
“No chance for Naby,” Klopp
said. “He’s really progressing
well. We will see how it will work
out for him for the African Cup of
Nations.”
Liverpool’s attacking options
have received a significant boost
with the news that Roberto
Firmino will be fit enough to
feature.
However, he resumed full training
during a week-long training camp
in Marbella and is widely
expected to return to the starting
line-up against Spurs on
Saturday.
Klopp continued: “Bobby was
part of
training
last
week, really
good, everything
looked
fine.
He will be
fine, I
am pretty sure.”
That leaves midfield as Klopp’s
biggest selection headache ahead
of the trip to the Spanish capital.
The German is set to name his
customary three-man midfield,
meaning one of Gini Wijnaldum,
James Milner, Fabinho and
Jordan Henderson will miss out
on the starting line-up.
Secret behind Liverpool, Tottenham’s UCL success
It is difficult enough to face
Barcelona and Manchester
City in the late stages of the
UEFA Champions League, with
both sides desperate for success
in a tournament in which victory
would define them for an era. To
not only face them while missing
your talismanic forwards, as
Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur
did, but to overcome them, is
second since being renamed the
UEFA Champions League.
Mane and Salah, who both got 22
Premier League goals, form twothirds
of Liverpool’s dreaded front
three, while Matip is the other half
of the much vaunted central defensive
partnership with Holland’s
Virgil van Dijk.
Salah will hope to banish the hurt
suffered in last year’s final, when
he suffered a shoulder injury early
in the game, a development that
affected his performance at the
2018 World Cup with Pharaohs in
Russia.
therefore a feat for the ages. When
Spurs beat City without the aid of
Harry Kane, and Liverpool came
back at Anfield even though
Mohamed Salah and Roberto
Firmino were not in the lineup,
they taught us something
important about these teams: that
the philosophy guiding them is
more important than any
individual player.
This seems like a
straightforward-enough point, but
until recently we have not been
living in straightforward times.
We are slowly emerging from a
decade dominated by Cristiano
Ronaldo and Lionel Messi,
individuals around whom entire
teams have been built; a period
we could almost call The Age of
The 2018-19 Champions
League has now been
whittled down to the final
two, with Premier League rivals
Tottenham and Liverpool set to
battle it out for continental glory
in Madrid tonight.
There have been some
spectacular ties thus far, with some
astonishing upsets and
sensational turnarounds
occurring.
Early favourites Real Madrid and
Juventus were knocked out by
dark horses Ajax in the last 16
stage and quarter-finals respectively,
while Tottenham then managed
to overcome the Eredivisie
champions to book their slot in the
final two.
Meanwhile, Liverpool overcame
the steepest of odds to knock
Barcelona out 4-3 on aggregate,
after losing the first away leg of
the semi-finals 3-0. They returned
to the Champions League for the
second successive season after
losing out on last year’s final in
Kiev to Real Madrid.
Liverpool were never considered
particularly strong favourites to
win the competition outright, with
the likes of Paris Saint-Germain,
Juventus, Man City and Barcelona
thought to have been frontrunners,
but they truly made their
case when they eliminated the La
Liga giant 4-3 in the semi-finals
on home soil.
The Reds barely made it out of a
‘Group of Death’ that consisted of
PSG and Napoli only to knock out
Bayern in the round of 16, but even
then weren’t given great odds to
win the competition outright.
Jurgen Klopp’s side cruised past
Porto 6-1 on aggregate to set up a
tie against Barcelona, and things
looked bleak for the Merseysiders
when they lost the first leg 3-0
away at the Camp Nou. They man-
No Plan B,
where the Plan A
of using Ronaldo or Messi to best
effect was so successful that no
alternative was needed.
The arrival of Spurs and Liverpool,
whose coaches both had to
make sharp tactical adjustments,
in the Champions League final
thus feels strongly symbolic.
aged to defy expectation, however, with a 4-
0 return leg win at Anfield, therefore booting
the Catalan giants out of the European
competition – seen as overwhelming favourites
at the start of the tournament to win it
all – to book their place in the Champions
League final for the second year in a row.
They are now 6/11 favourites according to
bet365 to win the Champions League this
season ahead of Tottenham, though relatively
speaking, both teams were never considered
‘favourites’ at the start of the competition.
The Reds’ Premier League form, however,
has been far superior than the North Londoners’,
and they managed to beat Spurs in
both of their domestic meetings, making
them considerable favourites against their