Liverpool have drawn Benfica in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, a draw that has some historical significance for the Reds.
To get a promising fact out early, every time we have beaten them in Europe’s premier competition – we’ve gone on to at least reach the final.
That is down to the two meetings in 1978, where six different goal scorers over two games provided an aggregate victory of 6-2 and we went on to beat Brugge at Wembley.
Then in 1984, an Ian Rush goal at Anfield and then a 4-1 victory in Portugal put Joe Fagan’s Reds on the way to winning the European Cup against Roma in Rome.
We met the same team again in the following season, knocking them out for a third time and again reaching the final but 1985 saw us lose to Juventus at Heysel on a famous, for all the wrong reasons, day.
Since then, we have played each other four times as a 2006 shock loss ended our reign as champions from Istanbul and in 2010 we booked our place in the semi-finals of the Europa League after a two-legged victory.
In all, there’s been 10 competitive matches with us winning four of the five two-legged affairs and so we should be full of confidence going into our next meeting.
The two most memorable moments of the ties would possibly be Kenny Dalglish’s first ever red card in 1984 and Momo Sissoko suffering the eye injury in 2006 that caused his to wear his famous Edgar Davids esque glasses.
Ian Rush’s tally of five goals is the figure for any of the current crop to beat, if they want to be the player with the most goals in the match-up.
Whatever happens though, let’s hope our run of reaching the final remains in tact!
For more information on all the games, be sure to check out LFC History.
8 – Liverpool have faced Benfica eight times previously in the European Cup/Champions League; only against Chelsea (10) have the Reds played more matches in the competition's history. Previous. pic.twitter.com/lisHmtRUnI
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) March 18, 2022
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