Beware Real Madrid in the Champions League

The 13-time champions have made winning this competition look routine over the years. Even after an up and down season and Liverpool up next, they’re in no doubt they can win it again

Sergio Ramos holds the trophy aloft in 2018 (AFP via Getty Images)

If there's one thing Zinedine Zidane knows how to do, it's win in the Champions League.

The French great was a winner as a player - when he was a goalscorer in the final so famously - while he has gone on to lift club football's most famous trophy on three occasions as a manager, all with Real Madrid.

The most recent of those came in 2018 when the 13-time winners beat Liverpool in an infamous and bad tempered contest in Kiev.

The two meet again on Tuesday in the quarter-finals of the competition in what shapes up to be one of the ties of the last eight.

It has been a trying season for Real with early season stumblings seeing them fall far off the pace in La Liga and dice with death in Europe.

Indeed, home and away defeats to Skakhtar Donetsk in the group stage looked like being fatal before Zidane's side eventually rallied to make the last-16.

But now, all change. While the injuries off the pitch are yet to abate, a turnaround in form on it has Real heading into this two-legged tie on their best run of the campaign.

A win over Eibar at the weekend - which cut rivals Atletico Madrid's lead atop the league table to just three points - was a ninth in their last 11 games.

On the continent, the dangerous Atalanta were kept at arm's length and comfortably despatched in the first knockout round ahead of a reunion with the six-time champs this week, a team who themselves know a thing or two about winning on this stage.

Zidane then is cutting a confident figure and one who feels his side have been written off a little too soon.

"I believe so," he said when asked if his team have been undervalued of late. "In the end, we deserve trust. What is said, we can't change all of that. What we can do is our jobs every day.

"Through history, this team turns around the things that have been said. We never give up on things, never. While there is a chance we always fight.

"We have had difficult moments, now we are in a good moment, though it doesn't mean anything at the moment. We have to keep on fighting and compete."

Liverpool, of course, have themselves endured a difficult season and after winning a first Premier League title at a canter a year ago have already been mathematically ruled out of retaining it.

With top four qualification by no means a certainty either, success in this competition may well be the best route back to competing in it again next term.

The Reds have been beset with injuries themselves with the absences of Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez at the heart of the defence particularly damaging.

Real have been hurt in that area too with Sergio Ramos, still public enemy number one on Merseyside, a notable absentee from Tuesday's first leg.

Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane (AFP via Getty Images)

Replacing him, as he has done for much of the year alongside Raphael Varane, will be Nacho Fernandez, with the Spaniard set to make his 150th appearance of a long but not necessarily personally successful career in the famous white jersey.

Ahead of his landmark outing, he echoed his boss’ sentiments.

“The manager said a few games ago that we at least had the right to be respected and the right to fight for the league. Now we’re three points off the leader. We’re at a club where we live with the pressure day after day but we know how to handle that and when the big moments like this come around we give our best to finish the season with success as we have done a lot.

“[Liverpool’s] front four are in a spectacular moment. They’re among the best in the world, without doubt. I am sure they will have the idea of revenge [for 2018] and will want to win – but we want that too. They lost that final but we will have the same desire as them.”

The irrepressible Karim Benzema will likely present Liverpool's patched up backline with their toughest test over the two legs.

The Frenchman has nine in his last seven games and continues to be ruthless in front of goal despite the rolling cast of characters behind him providing the bullets.

He will again be without Eden Hazard, whose stop and hardly started career at Real continues to be beset with injury after injury.

Out since 13 March with a hip injury there was some initial hope he would be able to play some part in Madrid, but Zidane is instead choosing to continue to play it safe with his most expensive player.

"The important thing for us is for him to be fully recovered," he added. "With the players, we never let them come back if the player is not ready. Of course we want him with the team. Now we will do things little by little and we will see when he is back."

Perhaps he'll finally be fit enough by the Champions League's latter stages. You'd be foolish to write off Real's chances of getting there with or without him.