Slot out to avenge pain or Champions League past

They are the captain and manager of a team who won the Premier League last year and who have made a 100 per cent start to the current season, but, as Virgil van Dijk and Arne Slot reminisced, it was about Champions League setbacks.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Perhaps that is the mentality of winners: that they remember the defeats more than the wins. As they prepare for another continental campaign, the two Dutchmen can recall losing to Atletico Madrid.

Liverpool's last game as Champions League holders came against Diego Simeone's team. It was an end in more ways than one; the final game in a packed Anfield before Covid intervened.

Liverpool lost 3-2. "It was a painful one," said Van Dijk. "We got knocked out." As Atletico return to Anfield, Slot thought back to his last meeting with a club who, he noted unprompted, have reached two Champions League finals in Simeone's tenure. Feyenoord are among the continental underdogs. "The last time I faced them, I still wake up thinking at nights about [Antoine] Griezmann and how good he was," said Slot. "We lost 3-1. The good thing is now I have players who can do similar things that Griezmann can do."

He was catapulted into a different orbit when he traded Rotterdam for Merseyside. He won his first seven Champions League matches with Liverpool. Nevertheless, the game Slot mentions most from his tenure at Anfield is one they lost: first over 90 minutes then, as a tie, over 210 on penalties, to Paris Saint-Germain. Having won in the Parc des Princes, when cruising to the English title, Liverpool began the night arguably as favourites for the European crown. They ended it out.