Good wine doesn’t need a winery – goes the proverb, which may have started in the Liverpool area. At least there is no poster or advertisement for Wednesday night’s Liverpool-Bologna Champions League match anywhere in the Merseyside city. Well, why would I advertise it, since the tickets were snapped up a long time ago, there were multiple oversubscriptions even for the opportunity to buy tickets in the summer on the club’s official websites.
However, the rival is far from a classic big team. In the previous season, Bologna made a huge surprise in the place where they could start the Champions League in the Italian top flight (Serie A), although, in addition to Atalanta’s great progress, thanks to the reform of the series and the results of their league mates, they also needed an extra starting opportunity given to Italy in order to be here. Exactly sixty years ago, in the 1964-1965 competition, the champion teams considered the predecessor of the BL could start in the European Cup (BEK), but then they were already eliminated in the first round against Anderlecht.
It doesn’t look like Bologna will be a frequent guest among the best, since Thiago Motta after the departure of the head coach in the summer, the 2024-2025 season will no longer turn out so brilliantly. Although they haven’t won since the end of August, the team is currently only in 13th place in Serie A. They tuned up for the trip to Liverpool with a 1-1 draw at home against Atalanta at the weekend.
The Reds’ fans are confident, let alone a victory, those who I was able to talk to around Anfield on Tuesday expect a multi-goal success from their team. Although the majority of them noted, the Champions League is not an easy playground, especially not as they missed a season in the series – in the 2023-2024 announcement, Pool could only start in the Europa League, and in the quarter-finals it was an Italian rival, the aforementioned Atalanta, who reported his fate -, it is not ruled out that Arne Slot the head coach will go into the starters of the English team more thoroughly than he did two weeks ago in Milan.
The Mersey side beat AC Milan 3-1 from a one-goal deficit in the first round of the league stage that changed the group stage. The third goal of the match Dominik Szoboszlai who, according to others, could also be one of the “victims” of the rotation. Although the Hungarian midfielder started the season well, he was in Liverpool’s starting line-up in seven out of eight games, and he played the whole six, while in addition to his goal in Milan, he also had two assists to his name. and it would not have the same momentum as it had in the first three rounds of the championship.
On the other hand, the rotation used by Slot can also be forced: from among the members of its current core team Andy Robertson, Diogo Jota and in the first stage of the season, the classic nine who wears the bench, Darwin Núnez is also dealing with a minor injury. Although, according to the latest news and based on what was said at the Dutch master’s press conference on Tuesday, it is to be expected, at least they will be in the squad on Wednesday night. The English talent envisioned by many to replace Szoboszlai, Harvey Elliott however, he broke his ankle and will be out of action for another month to a month and a half at best.
If Szoboszlai is in the starting line-up – or if he takes the field at all – he will be interested in his 25th BL meeting. So far, he has seven goals and three assists in the elite series.
It was a surprising experience that you could run into more than just Liverpool fans at Anfield on Tuesday. The breathtaking size and detail of the murals on the stadium tour, the club museum or the surrounding streets have also attracted football fans of other teams. There were, for example, three young people walking the streets as members of the German Borussia Dortmund, who must have watched on TV as their team ran over Celtic 7-1 on Tuesday night. The guys revealed that they will also be out for the Pool-Bologna clash today. He originally managed both teams in the past Jurgen Klopp they wanted to travel here out of respect for him, but they connected late, they couldn’t get tickets for a single match before the German manager’s summer vacation…
That’s all one person can count.
Even now, Klopp’s personality still feels decisive: Liverpool’s fan shop is full of news about the German manager. With books, posters, from all kinds of penny relics to the seemingly expensive dedicated mounts costing hundreds of pounds.
Behind the Kop, which is considered the place of Liverpool’s core, and no more than 20 steps from the stadium, is the iconic The Albert Pub building – although from the outside it seemed that the facility might be closed for a longer period of time, at least the company disappeared from there, it was discovered the evening before the match – the and a poster depicting the coach who won the championship again after 30 years with the team was placed on the back wall, next to the smiling profile of the German master with a single sentence: “Jürgen only reminded us of who we have always been.”
The situation is clear: the Premier League’s perennial podium contender and the favorite for Wednesday night’s BL match against Bologna.
We will see what the Slot crew manages to realize from all of this in the next period.
SOCCER, CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
LEAGUE SECTION, ROUND 2
21.00: Liverpool–Bologna (Anfield Road)
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