Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain may be dream opponents for UEFA in the first knockout round of the inaugural Champions League expansion, but it is a draw that leaves the Reds hard done by.
By Jack Lusby, ThisIsAnfield.com
“It could have been a Champions League final.”
PSG manager Luis Enrique summed it up in his assessment of a tantalising tie between his side and Liverpool in the last 16 of the Champions League.
Heading into the first leg at the Parc des Princes both sides are 13 points clear at the top of their respective leagues and considered champions-elect. PSG need six wins from 10 games to guarantee the title, Liverpool need seven.
It is undoubtedly one of the toughest fixtures in the tournament’s first proper knockout stage and one that UEFA, presiding over the first Champions League with 36 teams and a new format, will have been rubbing their hands together over when the draw was completed.
This is, after all, the purpose of expanding the Champions League and introducing a new league phase to replace the traditional group stage: more high-profile ties, earlier in the tournament, and more eyes on the product.
But for Liverpool, who stormed to the top of the table with seven wins from eight, drawing the reigning French champions and a side, like themselves, on a 24-game unbeaten streak is little reward for their efforts over those league games.
Not that Arne Slot and his players will let on, with every challenge embraced in a remarkably strong season, including resounding wins over the Spanish, German and English champions Real Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen and Manchester City already.
They head to Paris on the back to comfortable victories against Manchester City and Newcastle and with few injury problems to contend with, largely due to careful squad management and the eye for detail of lead physical performance coach Ruben Peeters.
Liverpool boast the world’s current best player in Mohamed Salah and the best centre-back in Virgil van Dijk, along with a number of others operating at elite form, such as Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch, Ibrahima Konaté and Cody Gakpo.
Bookmakers place the Reds as favourites to progress to the quarter-finals, aided by the second leg being held at Anfield, which they earned by virtue of avoiding the playoffs with a top-eight finish.
But the inclusion of a playoff round, pitting the sides who finished ninth to 24th against each other to determine the other eight sides to reach the last 16, has clouded any reward for a near-perfect league phase.
It meant Liverpool and second-placed Barcelona knew they would play one of the winners of two playoffs between PSG, Benfica, Monaco and Brest, the sides who finished 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th respectively.
Drawn against domestic opposition, PSG battered Brest 10-0 over two legs to reach the last 16 and make a mockery of their league placing after facing Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester City among their eight opponents.
Speaking in January, after a 2-1 win over Lille in the penultimate round of the league phase, Slot admitted even he wasn’t sure of the advantages of finishing top of the table, with the subsequent knockout draw so dependent on other teams’ performance.
“In tennis, when you are No. 1 seeded you know it’s always better to face the No. 24 than the No. 8 or the No. 12, because this is a ranking that is done for years,” he told reporters.
“But now we are in a new format where some teams are high in the league table because they had a lucky draw or some teams are low because they had a very difficult draw. So it’s far off to say that it’s an advantage to be one or two, we still don’t know yet if that’s an advantage or not.
“You might be lucky, you might be very unlucky, and ending up eighth can mean that you are maybe lucky. So for me, it doesn’t tell me anything.
“What’s, for me, the most important thing is that we’ve managed to skip a round, and that is definitely worth a bit.”
After the postponement of the December trip to Everton and a rescheduling due to their progress to the Carabao Cup final, Liverpool did not even enjoy the benefits of skipping the playoffs, with two midweek league games taking their place.
Either way, the fact remains that Aston Villa, who finished eighth, landed an objectively easier last-16 tie, with opponents Club Brugge finishing 24th in the league phase and only advancing after a defiant playoff win over Atalanta who finished ninth.
Again, this is exactly what UEFA will cherish when they look back on the first iteration of this new Champions League, but there is certainly a question over whether this is entirely fair.
Scrapping the playoffs and establishing a straightforward seeding for the knockout stages – first vs. 16th, second vs. 15th and so on – would surely serve as more justified reward for excelling in the marathon of an eight-game league phase.
Whether that will come into consideration when the European Club Association weigh up the pros and cons of this new format remains to be seen.
But it could lead the likes of Liverpool to alter their approach to the league phase in future, as ultimately five wins out of eight for Villa resulted in a better draw than their own seven wins and one dead-rubber defeat.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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