BY VOICE SPORTS TEAM
LIVERPOOL can book their place in the Champions League’s last 16 against Lille at Anfield at 10pm on Tuesday.
All the Euro log leaders need to do in the clash is to avoid defeat against a team that have won four of their six matches and are currently in eighth place.
Coach Arne Slot’s spannetjie, though, will have another big thing to play for, and that is to become the most suinigste Reds team in Champions League history.
Should they go 36 minutes without conceding a goal in front of the Kop on Tuesday, Slot’s manne will overtake the current club record for minutes without conceding a goal in Europe.
As it stands, that record belongs to former coach Rafael Benitez’s class of 2005-06 who went 572 minutes without conceding.
The Reds have the stingiest team in Europe alongside Inter Milan, with both teams having conceded only once in the first six rounds.
Centre-back pairing of Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate were again at their best at the weekend, keeping a clean sheet in their 2-0 win over Brentford at the weekend.
If they keep it clean again on Tuesday, not only will they be record holders, but in the last 16 as well.
Of the duo, coach Arne Slot says of their performance in the last match: “I think if I would have been the manager of Brentford I would have told you there were moments for us to win the game, because there were moments for them to win the game. Most of those moments were defended really well by Ibou and Virgil, they went in a one-v-one against them in a counter-attack, but we pushed them wide really well, which helped Alisson [Becker] to save those shots...
“Of course, one of the reasons we’re so high in the league table is because we have two and four very good centre-backs.”
TUESDAY’S OTHER UCL FIXTURES
Atalanta v Sturm Graz, Monaco v Aston Villa (both 7.45pm), Atletico Madrid v Leverkusen, Benfica v Barcelona, Bologna v Dortmund, Club Brugge v Juventus, Red Star Belgrade v PSV, Slovan Bratislava v Stuttgart (all 10pm)