Analysis'In Madrid, there is huge excitement and wary respect' - Graham Hunter's UCL final preview

Liverpool will on Saturday seek to conclude an unforgettable season in further glory by adding the European Cup to the Emirates FA Cup and Carabao Cup trophies they have already lifted in 2021-22.

Blocking the path of the Premier League runners-up to a treble and the club’s seventh triumph in Europe’s premier club competition are La Liga champions Los Blancos.

Paris will host the rematch of the 2018 Champions League final, which Real won 3-1.

And, ahead of the clash at Stade de France, writer, broadcaster and filmmaker Hunter detailed the pre-match feeling in Madrid, why this meeting will be different to four years ago in Kyiv, how Liverpool are perceived in Spain and much more…

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First of all Graham, what is the feeling in Spain ahead of the final? Are Real Madrid seen as the favourites?

The feeling in Spain – particularly if you are talking about Real Madrid fans, Real Madrid the club, which we in the media get a reasonable amount of access to – is, I’d say, one of gigantic excitement and that would mean that Liverpool as an opponent is not the first thing on those people’s minds. So, for example, Real Madrid are clearly the dominant European football club given that a win would give them 14 titles but it’s an anomaly that most people aren’t aware of that Real Madrid have only been champions of Europe and Spain at the same time once since 1958.

So, the concept of Real Madrid being the dominant club in Spain with the league titles is well established. The concept of Real Madrid being close to double anybody else’s European Cups or Champions Leagues is well established, but very few people understand the extraordinary rarity of them doing both at the same time. Therefore, in a season where they began with an… it wasn’t an emergency appointment, but Carlo Ancelotti has talked about how surprised he was to field the call to say, ‘Come home’. He said he would have stayed on Merseyside, he would have stayed at Everton. He was quite happy there, but that history was not to be written.

Real Madrid had no trophies last season, Carlo Ancelotti was surprised to be appointed, they only added, in any serious terms, 18-year-old [Eduardo] Camavinga from Rennes and David Alaba on a free. Now, by the end of the season, both of those have looked like handy pieces of business but when you are talking about how people are thinking and feeling, Real Madrid is a club where in the surrounding atmosphere the idea of clever, intelligent, strategic business can get set aside and instead it is, ‘We need to go big! We need to have big brass bands and clashing cymbals!’ and they didn’t do that.

Also, remember this is a season that started with three away games because the Bernabeu, which is going to be extraordinary, wasn’t ready and initially they only had 19,000 fans at home games. Therefore, despite Real Madrid being distinctly Spain’s best team and squad right now, there is a sense of marvel which is augmented by the way they got to the final. So the buzz, the feeling, you were reaching for in your question is: ‘We are in Paris, we are going to win again, this is our territory, this is our time.’ That’s the buzz, even ahead of looking at the rival.

Those improbable comebacks against Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City en route to the final almost seemed to happen because they are Real Madrid and this institutional muscle memory they have in this competition. Does that feed into the feeling that winning this trophy again is their destiny?

I love the phrase ‘institutional muscle memory’ so much that I am going to pinch it! It’s a very, very good way to describe what happened because if we are being brutally honest – and I suppose Liverpool fans might not have seen those games and are now only aware of the bare bones or the stats – Madrid were atrocious in Paris. I mean genuinely atrocious. Were it not for a couple of heroic challenges from defenders, particularly [Eder] Militao, and a string of very, very good saves from [Thibaut] Courtois, Real Madrid would have been out that night. And then for the second leg, without Madrid being awful again because they were much more front-foot, [Kylian] Mbappe scored one, probably could or should have scored another to make the tie at that stage 3-0 but Courtois again is playing pretty well. But Madrid are on a tightrope and Paris Saint-Germain, for one reason or another, don’t tuck them away and it’s a theme. There was a blitzkrieg of goals and they go through. I was there that night and there were a lot of people, even though you talk about institutional muscle memory, with their heads held in their hands in disbelief.

If people reading this didn’t see the first Chelsea game, then [Karim] Benzema’s two headers are just… I genuinely think the one where he is leaning back but gets it over [Edouard] Mendy is probably as good a goal as he has ever scored. In terms of geometry and human physics, it’s a miracle goal. Madrid are playing really well and Chelsea are not. Chelsea are second to the ball, but there is a point at which when Chelsea have scored they are in it. They have woken up, by no means is it petrifying. It’s clear that [Thomas] Tuchel has reminded them that away goals don’t count double and they are nowhere near out of the tie. At the time when it is looking like 2-2 or 3-2 to Chelsea, Mendy makes a mistake, it’s 3-1, the wind goes out of their sail.

Then you look at the second leg, and this is something I expect Jürgen Klopp’s analysts to look very closely at, by the time [Marcos] Alonso’s goal was ruled out, Chelsea could have been five or six goals up at the Bernabeu. It could have been a record home European defeat – and then it wasn’t. Then it wasn’t. The Rodrygo volley… he is a recurring theme, I don’t think he starts against Liverpool at Saint-Denis but he is such crucial player that maybe they go 4-2-3-1 rather than having [Fede] Valverde in the team. But if everybody is fit that is probably the only choice. And then Benzema does it again and they are through.

Then, onwards to City. Because the semis are split I would guess everybody that follows Liverpool would have had the chance to watch that game and there can’t have been almost anybody who thought, ‘It’s not going to be Liverpool and City in Paris’. One of the recurring themes across those ties, one that I feel is important and will be applied to Liverpool’s chances on the night, is that if you take aside the saves or the blocks, Paris, Chelsea and City all miss unfeasibly simple chances to score. They miss them and I don’t think you can live on a tightrope like that forever across a competition. If Real Madrid replicate that kind of form, Liverpool miss those kind of chances and Madrid win it, I don’t think it will ever have been equalled in the history of the European Cup: to beat so many good rivals and to beat so many good rivals who had the chance to tuck you away. After 89 minutes against City they are out, they are properly out. But again, if I can go micro rather than macro, the ball from the 19-year-old Camavinga in his first season at the Bernabeu, under all that pressure and using his slightly weaker foot, to Benzema, who reaches it on his slightly weaker foot on the byline and still manages to produce a full Rudolf Nureyev stretch and volley the ball back onto Rodrygo’s toe. And then suddenly all hell is unleashed.

Their route to the final has been genuinely extraordinary and for everybody apart from the fans of the beaten clubs, it’s been entertainment like you could not imagine, you could not script.

You touched on him there and we have to talk more about Karim Benzema, whose form this season has been remarkable. Is he simply the main threat to Liverpool and the main reason why Real Madrid can win this final?

I watched with interest when Mo Salah said, ‘I am the best in my position’ and there is a clear argument for that being the case. But I genuinely think, and this is without disrespect to Mo Salah, that Benzema is the best footballer in the world right now. And I say that with respect to [Kevin] De Bruyne and with respect to Mbappe. His partnership with Vinicius [Junior] now, if you take goals and assists from each man, is close to 100. He has never scored this many goals in the league in his entire career, he has never scored this many goals in all competitions, he has never scored this many goals in a Champions League season. But over and above that, it’s that he hasn’t had the responsibility of the whole team dumped on him, he has gone and grabbed it. He has gone and taken his own team by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘We are going to do this, we are going to do that, we are not beaten, it doesn’t matter how many times we are behind.’ They did it domestically too in a real crunch game at Sevilla when they were 2-0 down and screaming for breath and yet they win 3-2 and Benzema gets the stoppage-time winner.

The only layer I want to add onto that is that I think he plays beautiful football, I think he plays utterly extraordinary football, and that he is more than a striker. So many of his goals this season have started with him in deep midfield and then receiving and turning and linking and moving and maybe getting another touch before the goal touch. You’ll see him at deep midfield, out left and then scoring, in the same move – not across a game, in the same move. I remember when we were making the Take the Ball, Pass the Ball film, we interviewed a lot of players who had performed with [Lionel] Messi throughout his career and one of the recurring themes was that you get players who are brilliant at opening a move and opening up other teams, and you get players who are brilliant at scoring. You very, very rarely get somebody who does both and they would say: ‘Messi, you see him at the beginning of the move and the end of the move and that is something that elevates him.’

Well, Benzema is doing that and he is doing it over and over and over again. His technical skills, his pace at 34, his interpretation of space and how to find the place that that the midfield and defence least want him to be, how he passes unnoticed, the fact he scores off both feet and with headers. And when the penalties come, I think he had missed three out of five before the City penalty and he dinks a very impressive goalkeeper. That is elite mentality.

How is this Liverpool team perceived in Spain?

The realistic thing to say is that I know an awful lot of Spanish people and also a lot of Spanish media of around my age who are outright Liverpool supporters, such was your club’s dominance in the second half of the 1970s and beginning of the ’80s, such was the fact that Spain was beginning to break down from a dictatorship and was becoming slightly more liberal. Suddenly when Franco’s ‘all foreigners are bad, don’t go over there, all foreign influences are bad, don’t let them come over here’ went away there was an awakening and that was just at the time when Liverpool were perhaps, arguably, as astonishing as they have ever been. Gradually there were television broadcasts coming from the UK – highlights of, for example, Liverpool’s league triumphs. For that reason there is an enormous amount of affection for Liverpool within Spain and within Spanish media.

More than that now because English football is broadcast live every week there is an awful lot of understanding about what Klopp has done, there is an awful lot of admiration for Klopp as a person and there is an awful lot of admiration for the players. One of them, Fabinho, played at Real Madrid and one of them played at Barcelona, Thiago. I would say that there is almost nothing but wary respect. The Mo Salah words from immediately after Liverpool’s semi-final win and then once the second semi-final was resolved, they haven’t been seized upon too gleefully like, ‘We’ll show him.’ There has been a tone of, ‘Yeah, they are coming for us’ and I would say across the coverage there has been a tone of, ‘This is a different Liverpool.’ That’s called morbo over here, that expectation and build-up for a game where there is something extra riding on it. That has been a feature of the coverage.

Do you expect this final to be different to the one in Kyiv in 2018?

I fundamentally think it will be. If you want short and simple facts, for my taste: I’ve been at Melwood and now the AXA Training Centre a number of times, I’ve been lucky enough to interview a sequence of your players, plus Pep Lijnders, plus Jürgen a couple of times. So my respect for the knowhow, the quality of your team, the synchronisation of your play… one of the things that fascinates me is that Liverpool are an extraordinary counter-attacking team. I don’t think they set themselves up like, ‘We’ll play on the counter today’ but if you lose the ball in a bad area, I love the way they punish you. I love the clarity and speed and intelligence with which they move the ball from one end of the pitch to the other and Real Madrid are the same. There are very few things linking these teams in style or their interpretation of how football should be played, but one thing that does link them is that Real Madrid are absolutely brilliant at picking the ball up and playing intelligently and quickly from one end of the pitch to the other.

Therefore there is a respect for Liverpool in that if you compare 2018 to now, Liverpool are miles better. They are not a team now that mentally or spiritually think that Mo Salah is everything. He is patently team leader, he is patently a world-class striker, and that night in Kyiv, as close as it was until [Gareth] Bale scored his goals, I think there was a deflation [when Salah went off]. There is a phrase that I have been given back from two players and Jürgen Klopp only last week that I think answers your question, that Real Madrid know how to win. Now, that’s not outright saying they are full of the dark arts, but there is a place on the dial between ‘very good team’ and ‘ruthless team’.

Sergio Ramos was part of that because there is no question in my mind that he didn’t mean to do that damage to Salah, but it was a desperate foul because there was such a huge overload from the throw-in that if you allow Salah to turn, Ramos knows he is in the wrong position and there is a 70-30 chance it’s going to be a goal. That ruthlessness – Sergio Ramos is a break-the-mould player and guy – has gone now and I think Liverpool have gone the other way. I think your Liverpool team – squad, not just the team – is now much more hard-headed, much more prepared and over my career when I have asked about revenge as a motif, usually players and coaches say, ‘No, no, no.’ And Jürgen Klopp did say to me the other day, ‘If you go there thinking about revenge then you lose your focus’ and he is right. But once those players are on the pitch, I have got no question at all that Liverpool don’t just want to win, they want to say, ‘Right, it’s Madrid again, we’re going to do them.’ Not over the ball, but get redemption and wipe that stain off our shirts – and I think that is a powerful, powerful motif in this final.

Tactically then, the sides met in last season’s quarter-final and one of Madrid’s main strategies in the first leg they won 3-1 was to attack the space in behind Trent Alexander-Arnold through Toni Kroos’ passing and Vinicius Junior’s pace. Will that be similar this time?

No. Vinicius scored twice and you are right to say it was a tactic [but] one of the things that stood out that night and really surprised me across both ties was it was a Liverpool that didn’t have that ultra-intensity. Now, was that because there was no crowd? I don’t know. Now, it definitely helps Liverpool this time that it’s not a full Bernabeu and it’s not a two-legged tie. This is a final whereby honestly, I would expect Liverpool to probably have the edge on tickets and probably have the edge on noise; not a definitive edge, but an advantage. That night reminded me a little bit of the final in Madrid where Liverpool beat Spurs, because that was not a vintage Liverpool performance. That was a performance whereby one of the key things was that the two sides, who were struggling with the heat and struggling with the gap after their last competitive game, were not at their full intensity. Klopp realised it first, Klopp realised where to make changes first and albeit they were 1-0 up from the penalty, the truth is the manager that reacted most quickly to add intensity and add people that could run into spaces, opened the game. That was a theme across the tie when they met in the quarter-finals and I don’t expect to see Liverpool in the same physical and mental shape.

Trent is an astonishing footballer. I’ve met him, I’ve interviewed him, I really liked him and I love watching him. I genuinely think he is ultra-gifted and the fact he is a local boy and grew up so near to Anfield, it’s just a magical story at his age to have that much talent and that much level of achievement. Brilliant. Vinicius is a better player now than he was then, a significantly better player: his head is clearer, he is much calmer, he is much more cut-throat about decision-making and therefore that battle can come on again.

But if you pull the camera back and you look at those two matches where Madrid knocked Liverpool out, it’s now a long time since Liverpool beat Real Madrid. I think it’s one win, over two legs in 2009, since 1981. But I see Liverpool as an utterly different unit now in terms of key players, and I hope they are all fit, I desperately hope that everybody who Klopp wants to choose is fully ready and not just making it on the day. I see the mentality is different. I think that Madrid are definitely in the argument and you can underestimate their style – which can look a little bit ragged and invented on the spot, and there will be gaps and Casemiro will make fouls – but they are an extraordinary side.

I would call a winner and if you could tell me that Liverpool will be at full intensity for 90 minutes in Paris, then honestly I think they win. If they are not, or if they are not in shape to take their chances, I think Madrid then become favourites because your muscle memory idea is a really good one. There’s a clutch of players in there who have won four Champions Leagues already. It shapes to be a brilliant match, I cannot imagine any circumstances under which it is dull, and for me to commit to a prediction you would have to come to me on the afternoon of the match when we are pretty clear about the 22 players who are going to start. But well done, I am envious of you! I am an Aberdeen fan and if there is a Champions League final we should be in it not either of those two clubs – but seeing as we can’t be, good luck!