Liverpool have one game to save their season (sort of) as Real Madrid await in Champions League - The Warm-Up

FRIDAY'S BIG STORIES The Fraudpions League Ad/> Big game tomorrow? Big game tomorrow. And for some reason even The Warm-Up is feeling a little bit nervous. Not on behalf of any particular team: we are, of course, studiously neutral, and treat all clubs, coaches and players with the same amount of affectionate contempt.

UEFA Europa Conference LeagueJose’s time to shine, as Klopp wins award that no one will debate — The Warm-Up25/05/2022 AT 08:08 We've decided that the World Cup is to blame. Next season is set to be a campaign of two halves, as players spend the first half distracted and the second half recovering. Which means that this is the last sensible Champions League final we're going to get for two whole years.

Next season we'll all be gathered in Istanbul singing: «There are the least tired. The uninjured. The squad that mostly got a month off.

The Champions?» Of course it could have been a whole lot bigger. It could have had a Liverpool quadruple riding on it. That would have made this the biggest game in the history of history, and who knows what kind of state we'd all be in now.

Instead, we're faced with different questions. If Liverpool don't win tomorrow, does that make their season a little… underwhelming? Even, perhaps, a disappointment? Might we even be justified in reaching for football's most pungent descriptor: fraud? The answer to these questions is, of course, no. But the fact that they're there to be answered is quite interesting, in what it says about football in this particular moment.