Liverpool vs Barcelona: Jurgen Klopp’s team have made a habit of defying logic – there is still hope

Logic would have dictated that their season’s form was unsustainable and that they just wouldn’t have this many points at this stage. Yet here we are. They are a team that just keeps going

Whatever about seizing the day to actually win – there can be little doubt Jurgen Klopp always seizes the mood to actually perform. Especially on elevated occasions such as tonight’s match, where there's an electricity to a stadium like Anfield.

“Two of the world’s best strikers are not available and we have to score four goals to go through in 90 minutes,” the German said on the eve of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final second leg with Barcelona. “That is the plan: just try, and if we can do it, wonderful. If not, fail in the most beautiful way.”

In other words: just go for it.

“It is football,” Klopp added. “There is hope.”

That is also another element that elevates this decisive, final stage of the season, and why Klopp so catches the mood of it. We’re at that point where emotion - or hope - must trump logic because all that matters now is giving your all to try and do what you must. Doubt can dilute that. And logic - or thinking about the scale of the task - can bring doubt.

Liverpool are still a team playing without doubt. The last few months, and even the last few days, prove that. They keep defying logic.

Logic, after all, would have dictated that their season’s form was unsustainable; that they just wouldn’t have this many points at this stage. Yet they keep going.

Logic would have dictated that their season might have ended in fairly tepid fashion after the 3-0 first-leg thrashing at Barcelona, because of the manner they lost and the manner Manchester City had beaten Burnley. The late goal at Newcastle United blew that away. Their season was only fired again.

Logic dictates that Barcelona will comfortably get through to another Champions League final, especially with Liverpool needing to score at least three goals, and both Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino out.

And yet Klopp isn’t allowing Liverpool to believe that. They must believe something else.

There is admittedly a distinctive psychological process - almost a delusion - that must take over teams in situations like this. It similarly involves a necessarily twisted logic of its own.

It goes from the immediate next-day realisation that a task like overcoming a 3-0 deficit to Barcelona is virtually impossible, to a gradual next-week rationalisation of how it might actually be possible.

Mo Salah is out (Reuters) (REUTERS)

You can easily imagine the thinking.

If the stadium is rocking, the opposition may suddenly get apprehensive.

If there’s an early goal, they may suddenly feel the pressure.

If they feel the pressure… well, it’s all up in the air.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp (Reuters) (REUTERS)

The sense starts to grow that you might just witness a spectacle. Very recent Champions League history has only fostered this feeling, and ensured that there is much less delusion to it. There is now so much hard evidence that such comebacks are possible. Klopp will be seizing that, too.

A spirit of chaos has infused the competition, in a way that was never even imaginable for most of its history.

Stunning comebacks have become relatively standard. There have been five from two goals or more since the start of 2017 alone, with Barcelona involved in two, experiencing both sides, victory and defeat. Last season’s collapse to Roma was naturally brought up in Klopp’s press conference, although the German was quick to add a significant caveat.

“It was 4-1 away, they had an away goal… We have to do it our way.”

Barcelona have been in this situation before (Rex)

But that’s also almost the point, where genuine logic starts to fortify the delusion, because the manager must set a way; a visualisable route to victory.

It was what Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did with Manchester United before their Paris Saint-Germain comeback. It was what Luis Enrique did with Barcelona before their Paris Saint-Germain comeback. It is what Klopp is evidently doing now.

“I would imagine the place will be rocking already, that is what I expect. If we can score, that is what it is.”

But, if they score, it changes what the game is.

Barcelona boss Ernesto Valverde (Getty)

It is no longer an insurmountable 3-0 deficit, or even just a 3-1 scoreline.

It is a situation where they just need one more goal to make it properly tense, to make the opposition suddenly see the possibility of going out, and potentially play in fear. This is what happened with Barcelona in Rome last season. This is what happened with PSG repeatedly.

This is why just scoring one is more than a third of the battle. It changes the battle. And it makes it a proper game.

There is, however, another grand caveat to that.

“We not only have to score,” Klopp added. “We have to deny Barcelona from scoring.”

And that is arguably a more difficult task than scoring three against them, especially with Leo Messi in this kind of form, in this kind of determined mood.

It is arguably the worst possible situation in football. You must score, but in trying to do so leave yourself susceptible to the greatest player in history, and the sucker punch of an away goal.

Logic dictates Barca will get at least one, if not more than that.

Liverpool can’t allow logic like that to affect their thinking, though. Klopp must make them think a different way - and seize the spirit of the recent Champions League, as well the club’s entire season.