Liverpool are huge favorites in their Champions League quarterfinal tie against Porto.
Would it be tempting fate to say that Liverpool got lucky in the Champions League quarterfinal draw? Porto are, by most accounts, the worst team left in the competition, the beneficiaries of a pair of fortunate draws themselves, first in the group stage, where they finished ahead of Schalke, Galatasaray and Lokomotiv Moscow, and then again in the round of 16, where they beat a Roma side who have declined considerably since last season’s run to the Champions League semis.
For the first leg of the quarterfinal at Anfield on Tuesday, the Portuguese side will also be without two key players, center-back Pepe and central midfielder Hector Herrera. With Sergio Concecao likely to adopt a far more pragmatic approach than he did against Liverpool in the round of 16 last season, when the tie was effectively over after less than an hour of the first leg, two such experienced leaders will be missed.
Even if they were available, however, Jurgen Klopp’s side would be clear favorites, which is itself a fact worth dwelling on. Liverpool’s run to the final last year was shocking, both in that it happened at all and in the way it happened, all counter-attacking mayhem and trigger-happy Dejan Lovren slide tackles on the halfway line. They also benefited from an easy draw, topping a group with Sevilla, Spartak Moscow and Maribor, before facing Porto and Roma in two of their three knockout ties. The third came against Manchester City, the only elite side in the competition they already knew how to beat.
The Liverpool of 2018-19 are a different matter altogether. Indeed, whatever happens over the next couple of months, their being a different matter altogether is in some important respect the story of their season. The Reds have returned, decisively, to the top of the European game. After their win against Bayern Munich in the round of 16, at most three teams can legitimately claim to be better than them — City, Barcelona, Juventus — and none by a significant margin.
There has been a lot of chatter over the past year or two — and not just in relation to Liverpool — about the value of being among the best if you don’t actually win anything. This doesn’t have to be as stupid a discussion as many people make it, but it feels trivial to the point of stupidity to have to say that it’s preferable to consistently challenge for titles than it is to not. Such nonsense is the price of success.
Another, of course, is expectation. To say that the Reds are now expected to reach the semifinals for the second season running — this after failing to even appear in the knockout rounds since 2009 — feels like an understatement. Liverpool made more in revenue last season than all but six clubs in the world, per Deloitte’s money league. Porto, who have already agreed to sell their brightest talent to Real Madrid in the summer, didn’t even crack the top 30. That’s the difference between the two sides.
If a defeat to Porto in the round of 16 last season could have been written off as a disappointing loss in the club’s long overdue, but ultimately encouraging return to the Champions League, there will be no such excuses this year. Losing is ok, even for teams as good as Liverpool are right now, but it’s much harder to justify losing to some teams than to others. Porto are one of the former.