Villarreal's Champions League run no fluke: After eliminating Juventus and Bayern Munich are Liverpool next?

When the Beatles released the Ringo Starr-sung «Yellow Submarine» in August 1966, Liverpool were reigning champions of England, had won the FA Cup a year previously, and already had a social phenomenon in the seething, swaying, chanting Kop. One week previously, the Reds' star players, Ian Callaghan and Roger Hunt, had just won the World Cup with England.

On the day when the Beatles' publicity machine for their Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby release went into overdrive, Villarreal were in Spanish football's fifth tier. Located in a tiny agricultural and fishing town close to the Mediterranean Sea, the club's uncovered Madrigal «stadium,» with capacity for a couple of thousand, wasn't much more than a pitch with walls around it.

Fernando Roig, the Yellow Submarine's visionary President who in a few days will celebrate 25 years in charge, had just turned 19 and Unai Emery, the man who'll take them to Anfield this week wasn't even born. (He arrived in 1971).

They wouldn't have been considered a David to Liverpool's Goliath — more like the guy who lived three doors down from David and collected sharp stones for him to earn a couple of bucks a month.

But that maddeningly catchy song from the «Revolver» album, which went to No. 1 across the world (apart from in Spain, where it reached No. 3), was immediately adopted by the fans and local media.

There's a presumption that because the club have only become world-known over the last sixteen or so years the nickname is a modern creation. Not so. Villarreal were on a promotion mission that, by 1967, would see them wriggle their way back into the third division, and there's a lovely faded black-and-white photo of a fan banner held up by first-team players on the day which reads: