official matchday programme<\/strong><\/a>, Slot writes: \u201cWhen the draw for this season\u2019s competition was first made we knew that we were in a difficult group and this feeling was underlined when it was confirmed that our first game would be against Atletico, a team which has established itself as one of the strongest in Spain and also in Europe over the last decade.<\/p>\n\u201cI am sure that this is the kind of fixture that UEFA had in mind when they made changes to the format not so long ago as we face up to a tie \u2013 not just tonight but also later in the group stage \u2013 that could quite easily be a Champions League quarter-final, semi-final or even a final.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means we have to be ready for the qualities, strengths and challenges that we know Atletico will bring.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost important of all these is that under Diego Simeone they are always competitive. It would not be possible to consistently finish in the top four in La Liga \u2013 a league featuring Real Madrid and Barcelona \u2013 if this was not the reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this respect, Atletico are one of the most consistent teams in Europe and it has been this way for a while. For this to be the case, they have to perform at a really high level on a very regular basis so we should definitely expect that this will be the case tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it is very early in this season\u2019s Champions League with another seven group games to go after this fixture but I don\u2019t think it could ever be too soon to have a special European atmosphere at Anfield, especially as our fans know better than anyone else how much of a difference they can make.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Pick up your copy of the programme at Anfield or order from our <\/strong>online store<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first of the Reds\u2019 eight league-phase fixtures in this season\u2019s Champions League sees the Spanish club visit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1050,1051,13,1039,1046,1041,1052,1054,1053,763,1045,1044,1040,1049,12,1042,1047,1043,14,1048],"class_list":{"0":"post-430848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alisson","9":"tag-firmino","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-homepage","12":"tag-klopp","13":"tag-lfc","14":"tag-lfc-news","15":"tag-lfctv","16":"tag-lfctv-go","17":"tag-liverpool-fc","18":"tag-liverpool-fc-match","19":"tag-liverpool-fc-news","20":"tag-liverpool-football-club","21":"tag-mane","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-reds","24":"tag-salah","25":"tag-the-reds","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-van-dijk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115218949397676228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}