The Champions League final was spoiled by an unfortunate injury.
Cast your minds back to May, when Liverpool fans, and many neutrals, thought they might just win the Champions League. They’d beaten Manchester City, they might be able to beat Real Madrid.
Of course, it didn’t pan out that way. The Reds lost their star man Mohamed Salah in the first half and had to replace him with Adam Lallana. Of all the days for that to happen, of all the players for it to happen to, it had to be their star player in the biggest game of his life.
The instigator of the injury, Sergio Ramos, was accused by many of doing so intentionally. However, former Real Madrid boss Zinedine Zidane has set the record straight.
There were never any instructions that involved personally targeting Salah with physical challenges, as the Real Madrid boss explained when asked whether he told his defenders to give the player special treatment.
“Not at all! Our game was always the same, regardless of who we were facing,” he told UEFA.
“We told players about the individual characteristics of opposing players, so that they were aware of specific things that those players did.
“But I didn’t want to do too much of that, as I wanted my players to focus primarily on our own game.”
Basically translated:
“Lookit… they’re a good team and they’re favourites but we can only focus on what we can do and that’s all we’re thinking about.”
