Both Liverpool and Real Madrid will fancy their chances of winning the UEFA Champions League when they face-off in Kiev. With the crop of players available to both clubs, the match is expected to serve up lots of goals.
While Zidane and his entourage are devising plans to curb the threats of Liverpool's Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, and Sadio Mane, Jurgen Klopp is facing a similar dilemma in dealing with Cristiano Ronaldo.
The 50-year-old manager, during his time at Borussia Dortmund, successfully restrained Cristiano Ronaldo in the first-leg of the 2013 UEFA Champions League semi-final. His side won the encounter by four goals to one but fell to a 2:0 defeat at the Bernabeu in the second-leg, setting up a final with Bayern Munich which they subsequently lost.
“Mario Gotze played man-marking against Alonso! That's true. Everybody knew it before,” Klopp said in an interview with Robbie Fowler for the Mirror.
"Alonso gets the ball, turns, Ronaldo is on his bike already. So we played Mario man-marking against Alonso in the 4-1 at home. "And it worked pretty well. But it's not – you know this, you played the game – it's not that easy making these things against Real Madrid. They are cool as ice.
"You have a chance against them and they are not bothered. It doesn't affect them. Have you seen them even one time, panicking because someone had a chance against them? Ice.
"They think, 'opponents have chances, it happens. We have a chance, we score.
"Pep [Guardiola] said once, the big teams really have a cup of coffee and then bang, they go. So you have a chance against them, you'd better take it."
With Alonso amiss in this Real Madrid set-up, the task to make Ronaldo inefficient is pretty daunting considering he has the likes of Luka Modric and Toni Kroos surrounding him and serving up the passes. The forward has already bagged 15 goals so far in the competition this season.
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