for the third time, Liverpool and Real Madrid meet in a Champions League final, today, 2 pm (ESPN 2 TV and Star +) at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis (near Paris)which will serve as a revenge for both and also a tiebreaker, after sharing the titles in their previous decisive clashes, after Liverpool’s victory in the Parc des Princes in Paris in 1981 (1-0) and Madrid’s triumph in kyiv in 2018 (3-1).
A match that has all the attention of the world sports planet and in which a Colombian, Luis Díaz, Liverpool striker, appears as a candidate for leading actor, leading man.
Díaz, a peasant by birth, with Wayú blood in his being, in just four months, since his transfer from Portuguese Porto at the end of last January, became a key, unbalancing, determining and fundamental player in the luxurious English Liverpool squad, one one of the most expensive in world football and one of the paradigms of the modern game of pressure and attack, security and transition, speed and precision, under the command of German coach Jürgen Klopp.
And Diaz, the 25-year-old Colombian, will most likely start in a stellar Liverpool line-up.the English team with the most Champions (former European Champions Cup) with six crowns (third in history with the German Bayern Munich), will face nothing less and nothing more than the Spanish Real Madrid, the biggest football club in the world, the king of kings of the Champions League with 13 trophies, the greatest legend of the ball.
And his name will be mentioned with those of his teammates Salah, Mané, Van Dijk, Thiago; and with those of his rivals Benzema, Modric, Kroos, Casemiro… Díaz, Luis Díaz, the most important Colombian soccer player of the moment, is part of that constellation of stars.
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Diaz wants to make history
“I had always dreamed of playing in a Champions League final and more against a team like Real Madrid. I am living a dream. I want to try to take advantage of these moments and be happy.”the Colombian responded to the press, last Wednesday, the day he was one of the most requested players.
“We know what Real Madrid has, the great team it is, the experience it has. We’re going to counter what they’re going to do. It is a match that must be played minute by minute. In which we are going to give one hundred percent, ”he added.
Díaz played with Porto in the group stage, in which he scored both goals, and in the direct knockout rounds with Liverpool, with whom he scored another two goals. He is the best signing on the winter market and one of the players who has adapted to the Premier League faster and better. In the tough semi-final against Villarreal of Spain, his role coming off the bench for the second half was key to the 2-3 comeback, with a goal scored.
This Saturday, Liverpool is the favorite to lift the trophy by between one and 0.75 point odds on average compared to Real Madrid in the bookmakers. That is a condition that is not new for this Real Madrid, led by the Italian legend Carlo Ancelotti and who will direct his fifth Champions League final: he has won three, one with Real Madrid.
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The Spanish achieved spectacular qualifications in the phases prior to the final with spectacular comebacks in extremis against the powerful Chelsea and Manchester City of England (the latter in the semifinal) and Paris Saint-Germain of France. In all of them, French striker Karim Benzema shone in a special way with his 15 goals in 11 games, ten in the decisive moments of the qualifiers. His leadership and superiority over rivals make him, one step away from what would be his fifth Champions League, the best in the competition and ‘1-A’ candidate for the ‘Ballon d’Or’.
But also The fearsome African attackers of Liverpool, the Egyptian Mohamed Salah (with 8 goals in the championship) and the Senegalese Sadio Mané (with 5) are candidates for that throne.Both, according to the European press, possible candidates to be signed this summer by Real Madrid itself, after their failure to hire Killian Mbappé.
But for Colombia, the Champions League final gravitates in the presence of Luis Díaz, who appears in all international dispatches in Liverpool’s probable starting team and who, in the northern corner of South America, is expected to finish the game wrapped in the national flag with the trophy in the hands.
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