10 April 3, 2022The Sunday Times 2GS
Football
Benfica are the FC Hollywood of
Portugal. They are like Manchester
United and Bayern Munich in that
respect. They are disappointed with
their league form this season but
have done well in the Champions
League. They made it out of their
group at Barcelona’s expense and
then beat Ajax in the round of 16.
They carry a threat but the intensity
that Liverpool play at should be too
much for them.
It’s hard for the big clubs in the
smaller leagues to challenge as they
used to. Celtic winning the European
Cup in 1967 with a team drawn from a
30-mile radius of Glasgow belongs to
a different age. To do that now would
be like travelling to the sun and back.
The Premier League can attract
the best players in the world. Many of
the best Portuguese players, such as
Bernardo Silva, Diogo Jota, Bruno
Fernandes, João Cancelo and
Cristiano Ronaldo, play for Englishanyone in the early stages and
ultimately put it to bed, because you
have better players.
You don’t go into the game
thinking, “We can win it in the first
leg.” Klopp knows he has a special
team and they will go into it with the
same attitude they do in every game,
which is trying to get on the front foot
and stay there.
I later managed Benfica for 18
months from November 1997 in a
deal brokered by Steve Archibald, my
former Scotland team-mate. I was
part of the election campaign of João
Vale e Azevedo as president and he
was what you could call a colourful
character. There were problems with
the players being paid on time and
also in paying transfer fees. When
I was sacked I had to take my case
to Uefa and still didn’t receive the
correct compensation. Azevedo
subsequently spent several years in
jail for fraud.Klopp’s side can get
it wrong in the first
leg against Benfica
but they cannot
afford to lose to City
next weekend if they
want to win the
Premier LeagueSouness managed Benfica
for 18 months from 1997 and
describes them as the Portuguese
equivalent of Manchester UnitedT
he professionals’ mantra
is to take one game at a
time but, trust me, Jürgen
Klopp will be looking
ahead to Sunday’s visit to
Manchester City when his
team tackle Benfica in a
Champions League quarter-
final on Tuesday night in Portugal.
Klopp knows he has two chances
to get it right against Benfica and
only one to do so against City in a
potential title decider.
His team can get it wrong in the
first leg against Benfica and they
should still have enough to reach the
semi-finals in the second leg, but they
cannot afford to lose at the Etihad if
they want to win the Premier League.
Klopp cannot come out and say
that he’ll field a team on Tuesday that
also reflects his plans for facing City,
yet the reality is that it’s the bigger
game. He has one chance to get it
right, not two. Klopp and his players
will all trot out “one game at a time”,
and that’s how it has to be for
professionals, but the Liverpool
education I had was that winning the
league was the priority.
If Liverpool are looking for a good
omen in the Champions League, then
the sides I played for twice beat
Benfica in the quarter-finals on their
way to winning the European Cup,
in 1978 and in 1984. In 1978 I’d just
signed from Middlesbrough and was
not eligible to play until the semis,yet was still expected to literally
“muck in” as part of the team after
we came back from a goal down to
win 2-1 in the first leg.
There I was in my best gear and
looking pretty sharp, even if I do say
so myself, when Ronnie Moran
spotted me standing there and told
me to pick up the muddy kit; the
game had been played in heavy rain.
He was teaching me a lesson that
there were no superstars at
Liverpool, or “big heads”, as they
called us. Everybody was expected to
play their part in whatever way they
were asked to.
Benfica’s stadium is called the
Estádio da Luz, or Stadium of Light,
but my memory of our second leg
against them in the 1984 quarter-final
is that the floodlights went out in the
closing stages of a 4-1 win. We passed
them off the park and the Benfica
fans pelted us with coins and oranges
beforehand, so Bruce Grobbelaar
threw one back. I almost missed
that match after my mother’s death
left me in a state of shock and with
flu-like symptoms of shivers and
sweats, but I felt better on the
morning of the game and played in
the evening.
The same principles apply for an
away game in Europe nowadays as
back then. You keep the crowd quiet,
don’t give them any opportunity to
get excited, don’t do anything daft in
challenges or getting involved withGraeme
Souness
Forget Europe,
Liverpool’s focus
will be on title
decider with City
REUTERS