The Villarreal is just two steps away from reaching the first final in its history of the Championswhich will be held on May 28 at the Paris Stade de France. those of Unai Emery they want to live another great night in the mythical Anfield before the fearsome Liverpool in the first leg of a semifinal that the ‘reds’ play for the third time in the last five seasons. The only appearance of the ‘groguet’ team in this round was 16 years ago and it ended with a painful KO precisely against another English rival, the Arsenal.
The set of Emeryhowever, he will unapologetically visit a giant who is staging a spectacular duel with the Manchester City for the title of Premier. The Villarreal, defending champion of the Europa League, dreams of equaling the amazing feat of the Port of Jose Mourinhowho won the Champions in 2003-04 after winning the Copa de la UEFA.
Probable Liverpool-Villarreal line-ups
The Liverpool going through a very sweet moment, but in this edition of the Champions League, the Villarreal has already left two renowned continental champions in the gutter: in the round of 16 they beat the Juventus with a spectacular 0-3 in Turinafter 1-1 in the first leg at La Cerámica, and in the quarterfinals he did the same with Bayernbrand new Bundesliga champion 2021-22, after beating him at La Cerámica (1-0) and finishing him off in Munich (1-1). These qualifiers have led Villarreal to reach this semi-final with very good feelings and in one of the best moments of the season since in LaLiga has returned to get into the fight for European places.
While, Unai Emery announced yesterday that Gerard Moreno surely he will not arrive in time for today’s match due to his physical ailments, nor will he Yeremy Pinoof which he said that he suffers from an elongation that had been dragging on for days and that it suffered in the last training session, although, on the contrary, he pointed out that Coquelin will be available.
69 goals between Luis Díaz, Salah and Mané
As far as the Liverpool, highlight that the luck of injuries, unlike last season, has smiled on Jürgen Klopp, that he will be able to count on all his footballers except for the Brazilian Firmino, who suffers from physical problems. The German coach, who has one of the most competitive squads on the planet, will have a luxury attack made up of louis diaz (arrived in the winter market from Porto), Mohamed Salah y Sadio Mané. Between the three of them they have scored 69 goals this season: 30 for the Egyptian, 20 for the Colombian and 19 for the Senegalese.
The only previous clashes between Villarreal y Liverpool took place in the semi-final of the Europa League 2015-16, in which Adrian Lopez he scored the only goal of the first leg in Spain in minute 92 and gave the victory to the ‘groguet’ team, then led by Marcelino Garcia Toral. However, Liverpool Klopp turned the tie around with a 3-0 win Anfieldwith an early own goal from Bruno Soriano (7′), to which were added in the second half the goals from Daniel Sturridge (63’) y Adam Lallana (81′). An edition in which the ‘reds fell in the final against Sevilla (1-3) who trained precisely Unai Emerytoday’s Villarreal coach.
Since the start of 2009-10, the first Europa Leaguethe Gipuzkoan coach has overcome 84% of his knockout rounds in the Europa League/Champions (31/37), the second best record of any coach who has played at least ten after Zinedine Zidane (14/16 – 88%).
read also