Why Tottenham will win

Rory Smith makes the case for Spurs:

It is the nature of a single, winner-takes-all game that every advantage can, in a different light, start to look like a disadvantage. Mauricio Pochettino and Spurs do have choices to make: Do they play with a three-man defense or a four-man back line? Does Harry Kane start, or is he best used from the bench? If he does, who joins him? From one angle, it looks like uncertainty; from another, it looks like unpredictability

Though Klopp’s record against Pochettino is good — one defeat in nine games — Spurs and Liverpool’s meetings tend to share a pattern. At some point, Pochettino will tweak something, do something unexpected, and as a rule, Liverpool will struggle to react. That happened, certainly, in the last encounter, which Liverpool won by 2-1, but only thanks to a Hugo Lloris mistake and a Moussa Sissoko miss. Spurs dominated for long stretches at Anfield. That will give Pochettino’s team hope.

Not that hope is in short supply. There is a weightlessness about Spurs, thanks, in part, to the chaos and wonder of the team’s run to its first European final in 35 years — the comeback in Amsterdam, the heart-stopping drama of the quarterfinal with Manchester City, even the fact that, after only three group games, the team seemed likely to be eliminated. By meeting every challenge, by surviving every scare, Tottenham has cultivated an air of invincibility. Destiny, Pochettino might call it.

Partly, though, it is because Spurs is not expected to be here. Liverpool has the pressure of its failure in the league and its defeat in Kiev; Spurs has only the opportunity to become the least likely champion of Europe since — probably — Liverpool in 2005. Over a season, it has been unable to compete. Over 90 minutes, there is little between the two teams. Spurs only needs a little luck, a little belief, a little something. It has had that in spades in this tournament so far.

Will the three-week layoff since the end of the Premier League season affect the teams?

Rory went to Spain’s Costa del Sol — yes, tough duty, but he was surprisingly amenable to the request; go figure — to find out. Here’s a little of what he discovered:

“Some Liverpool players found it was in the evening when their minds tended to wander. It was then, once the children were in bed or training was done, that their thoughts would drift to the Champions League: back to Kiev, forward to Madrid, lingering on what might have been, and what could yet be.