Over three weeks to the Champions League final. That can only mean one thing: over three weeks worth of build up.
Imagine the saturation. We're talking stats, we're talking replays, we're talking about omens and past players being scraped off the barrel to talk about their own experiences - mark my words, by the end of this drag, Florent Sinama Pongolle will be sitting on the Sky Sports News couch. There'll be more fan songs, stories about flights, Phil Thompson will try his best to describe what makes Liverpool Liverpool and Jay from the Inbetweeners will presumably be rolled out in some capacity too.
In all the madness, there'll be endless analysis. We'll know the weak points, we'll know the managers' tendencies and we'll know how many goals we can expect because a computer told us so and, most importantly, we'll take Cristiano Ronaldo's record against Liverpool and question if he really has the stomach for it against whatever it is that makes Liverpool Liverpool.
Does he like it up 'im?
Since Liverpool overcame Klavan and finally made their way into the Champions League decider, much has been made of the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo has scored just one goal at Anfield in his entire career.
Two things: the final isn't at Anfield; and Ronaldo has only played there twice since he became the best player in the world (and won twice).
But it probably is heartening for Liverpool fans to look at his filthy overall record as a goalscorer and compare it to his effect specifically against the Merseyside outfit. For Real Madrid, Ronaldo has scored
421 goals in 405 games. That's a goal scored
every 84 minutes for nine f**king seasons.
Cristiano Ronaldo's record against Liverpool isn't anywhere near as good.
Ronaldo v Liverpool
- Played 11
- Won 7
- Lost 3
- Drawn 1
- 3 goals
- 317 minutes per goal
In his time at United, he missed five games that were against Liverpool. Here's what he did for the matches he was there for.
April 2004
Manchester United 0 Liverpool 1
90 mins
September 2004
Manchester United 2 Liverpool 1
90 mins
January 2005
Liverpool 0 Manchester United 1
67 mins
September 2005
Liverpool 0 Manchester United 0
90 mins
February 2006 (FA Cup)
Liverpool 1 Manchester United 0
90 mins
March 2007
Liverpool 0 Manchester United 1
90 mins
December 2007
Liverpool 0 Manchester United 1
90 mins
March 2008
Manchester United 3 Liverpool 0
90 mins
GOAL!
March 2009
Manchester United 1 Liverpool 4
90 mins
GOAL!
October 2014
Liverpool 0 Real Madrid 3
75 mins
GOAL!
November 2014
Real Madrid 1 Liverpool 0
90 mins
Three goals against the Scousers, one a penalty in a game they lost. The other two? Peak Ronaldo.
In 2008, he leapt into the sky and made a boy of Pepe Reina to power a header into the goals at Old Trafford.
In 2014, he scored his first Anfield goal - one of his finest goals - as Madrid tossed around Brendan Rodgers' men and won 3-0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0Rxj42MaKQ
Whilst he has three goals in 11 games v Liverpool, he's scored three times in his last four outings against them too.
Interestingly, he also enjoys playing against Jurgen Klopp. With Madrid and Dortmund seemingly being thrown together every year in the Champions League, Ronaldo has taken aim at a Klopp defence on nine different occasions.
Ronaldo v Klopp
- Played 9
- Scored 7
- Won 3
- Lost 3
- Drawn 3
But as Jose Mourinho so brilliantly put it, "statistics are statistics".
