Henderson, Emery and night in a bar that launched Klopp’s new Liverpool

Liverpool’s first European encounter with a team led by Unai Emery made a miserable impression on Jordan Henderson, yet Jürgen Klopp’s reaction to that defeat by Sevilla in the 2016 Europa League final would leave a lasting one. It was, the Liverpool captain reflects, the start of the stunning chapter that could include a third Champions League final appearance in five seasons in Paris next month.

Emery’s Villarreal stand in the way of that ambition at Anfield on Wednesday and at the 23,500-capacity El Madrigal stadium next Tuesday.

It was Marcelino’s Villarreal in the 2016 Europa League semi-finals and, after Liverpool’s 3-1 aggregate victory, Emery’s Sevilla denied Klopp a European trophy and passage into the Champions League at the end of his debut season at Anfield. As Sevilla celebrated a third successive triumph in the competition under Emery, Liverpool retreated to the Novotel Basel City hotel to lick the wounds of a 3-1 defeat. Henderson, an unused substitute at St Jakob Park after sustaining a serious knee injury in the quarter-final at Borussia Dortmund, wanted to be alone. Klopp had other ideas.

“That night always sticks out,” the midfielder recalled on Tuesday. “Because I remember after the game going back to the hotel and the lads were all very disappointed and just wanted to go back to their room, not see anyone and get their heads down. But the gaffer was different to what you expect. He got everyone together downstairs in the bar area and we all spent the night together. It felt as though he knew this was the beginning, the start of something special to come. As a player it is very difficult to think like that then when you’ve just lost a final but I always felt he was very different to anything I’d seen