Champions League final | Liverpool’s Salah out for revenge, Madrid looking past Mbappe saga

Ahead of the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday, revenge is on Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah's mind, while Real Madrid wants to quickly forget the Kylian Mbappé transfer saga

Mohamed Salah could easily have given the kind of diplomatic answer trotted out by most football players. He just couldn’t.

Was there a preference, Salah was asked minutes after Liverpool reached the Champions League final three weeks ago, over which team he faced in the title match in suburban Paris?

“Yes,” Salah said, stretching his neck and turning his head from side to side as if he was limbering up for another game. “I want to play Madrid.”

Salah clearly hasn’t forgotten what went down in the 2018 final against Real Madrid in Kyiv. That painful moment in the first half when he tussled with Sergio Ramos and landed heavily on the ground, dislocating his left shoulder. Some likened it to a wrestling-style maneuver by the wily Ramos, who appeared to pin Salah’s right arm and roll the forward down to the turf.

Salah left the field in tears and watched the remainder of the match on TV in the locker room as Liverpool, deprived of its most likely scorer, lost 3-1.

Four years later and Ramos is no longer at Madrid, with the Spain great having just reached the end of an injury-ravaged first season at Paris Saint-Germain.

That didn’t stop Salah from posting “we have a score to settle” on Twitter after Madrid joined Liverpool in Saturday’s final by producing that amazing second-leg comeback against Manchester City in the semifinals.