Talk about ‘Super Saturday’. This weekend sees not only the final of European football’s most prestigious club competition, The Champions League, but also the running of the most famous Flat race in the world, the Epsom Derby.
How can the stats help us find the winners of both contests?
Let’s take the football first.
On Saturday night at the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid, Liverpool take on Tottenham Hotspur in the first all-English Champions League final since 2008 and only the second of all time.
Liverpool by contrast will be playing in their eighth CL/European Cup final and have won the competition five times.
Generally in Champions League finals when you have a team with such a pedigree against ‘new kids on the bloc’ it’s the former which wins though’s it’s often pretty close.
Let’s take a look at the Liverpool-Spurs head-to-heads. This season Jurgen Klopp’s team beat Spurs 2-1 home and away but the game at Anfield in March was close and only an injury-time own goal gave Liverpool victory. The year before the teams drew 2-2 at Anfield and Spurs thumped Liverpool 4-1 at home. But that victory was their first win against the Reds since 2012 and historically Spurs’ record against Liverpool isn’t great with just 48 wins to Liverpool’s 82 wins from their 172 meetings, stretching back to 1909.
Moreover Liverpool come into the game in much the better form. They have won 13 of their last 14 games. Spurs by contrast have only won one of their last five.
The Londoners’ chances however will be bolstered by the likely return of talismanic striker Harry Kane, who has scored four times in eight games against Liverpool and their supporters will be praying that Jurgen Klopp’s final ‘jinx’ strikes again. The charismatic German is great at getting teams to finals, but he has lost the last six he has contested, including his last three in Europe.
Another point in Spurs’ favour is that much more pressure will be on Liverpool. It’s true that the club haven’t won a trophy since 2007, but they have over-achieved by getting to the Champions League final. For Liverpool though, defeat will be even harder to swallow given that they attained 97 points in the Premier League season without winning the title.
