Liverpool Face Sevilla and Their Special Relationship with the Europa League

Liverpool, and especially their fans, must believe it’s destiny, and you can understand that. After all the elements that combined to make the Anfield quarter-final second leg against Borussia Dortmund one for the ages—the Jurgen Klopp connection, the atmosphere, the scintillating, barely credible comeback—why wouldn’t they think that the club’s name is about to be engraved on the UEFA Europa League trophy for a fourth time?

In deepest Andalucia (and perhaps only there), they think quite differently. Many felt that the encounter between Klopp’s former club and his current one was so delectable that it should have been saved for the competition’s climax, but they could not have picked tougher opponents than Sevilla in Wednesday’s final.

Sevilla, like Liverpool, is a city whose heart beats football and sustains two grand and passionately supported clubs—Real Betis being their neighbours as Everton are Liverpool’s. In the context of the final, they have plenty in common, too. Sevilla and Liverpool have played seven UEFA Cup and Europa League finals between them, and neither has lost a single one.

Yet if Liverpool in a European final seem like an unstoppable force, they might be about to meet their immovable object. The regulars at the Estadio Sanchez-Pizjuan create a similar noise and fervour to those at Anfield—in a way, it is a shame that the pair are playing one match at a neutral venue, denying us a leg at each club’s respective home. Moreover, Sevilla believe that this moment is their destiny.

“El trono ya espera su rey,” said the headline of the city’s sports daily Estadio Deportivo on February 18th, the day of Sevilla’s return to the Europa League when they faced Molde—”The throne is now expecting its king.”

Rarely has a club seem so focussed on a trophy whose value has not always been recognised in every corner of Europe, and certainly not in England.

It’s hard either to think of a club who has worked so hard to make sure they were a part of the Europa League, taking the often-sniffed-at back door in, of third place in their UEFA Champions League group. Yet once Unai Emery’s team no longer had the possibility of reaching the last sixteen of Europe’s premier club competition, their gazes switched in an instant.

Watching Sevilla take on and beat Juventus at …

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