Now for the trip to Middlesbrough. Liverpool, or the Two Liverpools as they should be known, exist in parallel universes where Rafa Benítez's men can come to the Bernabéu and defeat a Real Madrid side who had won nine consecutive league matches but then motor across northern England to the Riverside with their cherished Premier League ambitions unravelling.
Maybe they should stop caring about domestic power. Last night a wedge of their Euro-centric followers brought The Kop to the home of football's greatest superpower and roared their approval for a warm-down. The Liverpool squad jogged around a pitch that was meant to serve as the stage for an ambush by a Madrid whose manager, Juande Ramos, was swiftly reacquainted with the obduracy and spirit of Premier League football.
It grows ever more curious. Liverpool bring that tenacity to European action but cannot find a consistent winning formula in a league they dominated for two decades before Manchester United ran off with the ball. People say they lack the depth of talent to end their 19-year wait for a domestic title and yet up pops a support act, Yossi Benayoun, to strike eight minutes from the end of a game Liverpool had smothered through sheer tactical forethought.
Benayoun played only because Steven Gerrard was unable to start. Fernando Torres, their gliding assassin, departed with an injured foot. And yet Liverpool still found a path to the honey-pot of a 1–0 first-leg away win. Can anyone figure this team out? Real, certainly, could not, and as Benítez waved to acknowledge the crowd's affectionate singing in the dying moments he was also raising his hand to the possibility that he will one day stand in the next dug-out as Real Madrid manager.
For Liverpool to prevail without Gerrard for the first 87 minutes and Torres for the last 28 is testimony to the deep reserves of know-how that manifest themselves on the continent. "Liverpool FC – European Royalty", announced one banner. A familiar delirium swept through supporters who will board coaches and trains to be at Boro on Saturday afternoon.
It was no disgrace to seek to nullify Real's attacking threat here. Granted, United had played with greater ambition at Internazionale on Tuesday, but only one English side went home with a win.
This was a classic chalkboard triumph. While Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso threw a blanket over Raúl, Fernando Gago and Lassana Diarra, their more attack-minded colleagues waited for the opportunity to score from a breakaway or set piece. The chance came when Fabio Aurelio curled a free-kick on to the head of Benayoun, who was in more space than a Real Madrid defence should allow. The revenge of the understudy. Gerrard's cameo was hardly required.
The chief threat was Arjen Robben, once of Chelsea, who displayed all his best and most infuriating traits in one parade of thwarted endeavour. Each time he was touched, he jumped like a scalded cat and then hobbled. Every time football's status as a contact sport was reaffirmed by Liverpool's tacklers, Robben turned it into a street crime. But at least he carried the ball and the fight to Liverpool.
The game's main sub-plot was meant to be Torres's return to the half of Madrid that loathes him. To the outside eye Torres was born on the wrong side of the tracks. By posting his allegiance to the less celebrated inhabitants of the Vicénte Calderon stadium on the banks of the Rio Manzanares, El Nino turned his back on the opportunity to join the great Real goalscoring lineage of Di Stefano, Puskas, Hugo Sanchez and now Raúl.
Torres would have looked a picture in the crisp white of the King's club but his boyhood love was for Atlético, who trail Real 9–0 on the list of European titles won. To swoon for Atlético in the city where the world's most illustrious club parade their majesty must have felt like walking past the Prado to take in the pavement art outside the train station.
Fortunately, though, success is not the only force to which the human heart responds and Torres was to become to Atlético what Raúl is to Real: a Madrileno sent down from the stands to the pitch as an emissary of the people. Before the kick-off Liverpool's record signing at £26.5m went down on his haunches and stared at the ranks of white like a skier studying an arrangement of slalom poles.
But it was not his night. There were intimations of his increasing frailty when a first-half bang to the foot sent him to the touchline for treatment and he was withdrawn after just over an hour.
The pursuit of a first league title since 1990 has assumed greater emotional importance in this year of the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, and the game at Manchester United on 14 March remains the season's biggest. But so much joy flows in Liverpool's European universe that England must seem another country, remote and unconquerable.
Maybe they should stop caring about domestic power. Last night a wedge of their Euro-centric followers brought The Kop to the home of football's greatest superpower and roared their approval for a warm-down. The Liverpool squad jogged around a pitch that was meant to serve as the stage for an ambush by a Madrid whose manager, Juande Ramos, was swiftly reacquainted with the obduracy and spirit of Premier League football.
It grows ever more curious. Liverpool bring that tenacity to European action but cannot find a consistent winning formula in a league they dominated for two decades before Manchester United ran off with the ball. People say they lack the depth of talent to end their 19-year wait for a domestic title and yet up pops a support act, Yossi Benayoun, to strike eight minutes from the end of a game Liverpool had smothered through sheer tactical forethought.
Benayoun played only because Steven Gerrard was unable to start. Fernando Torres, their gliding assassin, departed with an injured foot. And yet Liverpool still found a path to the honey-pot of a 1–0 first-leg away win. Can anyone figure this team out? Real, certainly, could not, and as Benítez waved to acknowledge the crowd's affectionate singing in the dying moments he was also raising his hand to the possibility that he will one day stand in the next dug-out as Real Madrid manager.
For Liverpool to prevail without Gerrard for the first 87 minutes and Torres for the last 28 is testimony to the deep reserves of know-how that manifest themselves on the continent. "Liverpool FC – European Royalty", announced one banner. A familiar delirium swept through supporters who will board coaches and trains to be at Boro on Saturday afternoon.
It was no disgrace to seek to nullify Real's attacking threat here. Granted, United had played with greater ambition at Internazionale on Tuesday, but only one English side went home with a win.
This was a classic chalkboard triumph. While Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso threw a blanket over Raúl, Fernando Gago and Lassana Diarra, their more attack-minded colleagues waited for the opportunity to score from a breakaway or set piece. The chance came when Fabio Aurelio curled a free-kick on to the head of Benayoun, who was in more space than a Real Madrid defence should allow. The revenge of the understudy. Gerrard's cameo was hardly required.
The chief threat was Arjen Robben, once of Chelsea, who displayed all his best and most infuriating traits in one parade of thwarted endeavour. Each time he was touched, he jumped like a scalded cat and then hobbled. Every time football's status as a contact sport was reaffirmed by Liverpool's tacklers, Robben turned it into a street crime. But at least he carried the ball and the fight to Liverpool.
The game's main sub-plot was meant to be Torres's return to the half of Madrid that loathes him. To the outside eye Torres was born on the wrong side of the tracks. By posting his allegiance to the less celebrated inhabitants of the Vicénte Calderon stadium on the banks of the Rio Manzanares, El Nino turned his back on the opportunity to join the great Real goalscoring lineage of Di Stefano, Puskas, Hugo Sanchez and now Raúl.
Torres would have looked a picture in the crisp white of the King's club but his boyhood love was for Atlético, who trail Real 9–0 on the list of European titles won. To swoon for Atlético in the city where the world's most illustrious club parade their majesty must have felt like walking past the Prado to take in the pavement art outside the train station.
Fortunately, though, success is not the only force to which the human heart responds and Torres was to become to Atlético what Raúl is to Real: a Madrileno sent down from the stands to the pitch as an emissary of the people. Before the kick-off Liverpool's record signing at £26.5m went down on his haunches and stared at the ranks of white like a skier studying an arrangement of slalom poles.
But it was not his night. There were intimations of his increasing frailty when a first-half bang to the foot sent him to the touchline for treatment and he was withdrawn after just over an hour.
The pursuit of a first league title since 1990 has assumed greater emotional importance in this year of the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, and the game at Manchester United on 14 March remains the season's biggest. But so much joy flows in Liverpool's European universe that England must seem another country, remote and unconquerable.
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