Outsiders Villarreal plotting another surprise with Liverpool next in their sights

At the 2019 Champions League final, Serge Aurier sat two seats along from Juan Foyth among the Tottenham Hotspur substitutes.

No footballer wants to be on the bench for the highlight match of their club career, but, in the opening minute of that final, as Liverpool’s Sadio Mane latched on to a pass and accelerated into precisely the channel that Foyth, or Aurier - both right-sided defenders - would normally patrol, they might have felt momentarily spared.

Mane immediately won a penalty and Mohamed Salah converted it for the first of two unanswered Liverpool goals.

On Wednesday, Foyth and Aurier will likely contest one starting place in an XI on the brink of another Champions League final. Neither would have anticipated that when they swapped North London earlier this season for a small, unfashionable town just off the highway that links Castellon to Valencia.

Villarreal, who take on the Liverpool of Mane, Salah and company in the first leg of their semi-final, are the clear outsiders in this European Cup’s last four. But the diverse past experience spread around their mix-and-match squad means they will not be arriving at Anfield with wide-eyed awe.

If Foyth and Aurier know only too vividly how the Liverpool juggernaut can crush an underdog’s dream, Etienne Capoue, anchor of a Villarreal midfield that tamed Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals and held firm through a last-16 tie against Juventus won via a late flourish, would testify that Anfield intimidates even more than Turin or Munich.

Capoue, one of four ex-Tottenham players in the Villarreal squad, played four times at Anfield during his longer spell at Watford. He lost all four. Three of those defeats were by five-goal margins.

Francis Coquelin scarcely has happier