Liverpool travel to Paris Saint-Germain for their 18th Champions League quarter-final, adding further glory to an epic saga that began with a coin toss.
Sometimes in life we face challenges that have come our way entirely by chance, where we often have a 50% chance of success and a 50% chance of failure.
These are the same odds as when you flip a coin – a method used to make trivial decisions and, in rare cases, to decide something important, such as shaping Liverpool’s history in Europe.
Liverpool travel to the Parc des Princes on Wednesday to face Paris Saint-Germain for the second year running in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals. It is the 18th time the Reds have reached this stage of the European competition, building on a history as a European powerhouse that began with a stroke of luck.
The Anfield side faced Cologne the first time they qualified for the European Cup quarter-finals. Both the first leg, which was in England, and the second one, played on German soil, ended in goalless draws, so it was decided to hold a play-off match in Rotterdam.
That match on Dutch soil ended in a 2-2 draw after extra time, with goals from the Reds’ Ian St. John and Roger Hunt cancelled out by goals from Karl-Heinz Thielen and Lohr.
By that time, the penalty shoot-out had not yet been introduced into the modern game of football as we know it – a rule that was introduced later in 1970 – so the referee had to decide the fate of both teams by tossing a coin.
Liverpool captain Ron Yeats remembered calling tails and watching the coin land stuck on its edge in the turf. The defender detailed: “I said to the referee, ‘Ref, you’re going to have to re-toss the coin.’ And he went, ‘You’re right, Mr Yeats.’
“I thought the German captain was going to hit him. He was going berserk because it was falling over on the heads. He picked it up, up it went again, came down tails.”
Cologne found themselves on the ‘other side of the coin’, whilst the Reds secured their place in the semi-finals against Inter, against whom they were knocked out on a 4-1 aggregate after suffering a painful 3-0 defeat in the second leg in Italy.
PSG test awaits
As mentioned above, this is the 18th time the Merseyside side have reached the quarter-finals of this competition, in which they have a fairly high win rate.
The Reds have reached the semi-finals on 12 of the 17 occasions they have played in the quarter-finals (including the coin toss), meaning they have only been knocked out five times at this stage of the competition.
Arne Slot’s side are in poor form after suffering a thrashing at the hands of Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals and are struggling to secure qualification for next season’s Champions League in the domestic league, where they sit fifth with 49 points.
Meanwhile, Luis Enrique’s side welcome the English side in high spirits, having thrashed Chelsea 8-2 on aggregate in the previous round and recently extended their lead over second-placed Lens in Ligue 1 to four points.